Legion of Angels News Archive

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Alan Canon grew up in a fundamentalist household and was a Bible camp prize winner.

But his family also valued science, and he ultimately couldn’t reconcile the two and became an atheist.

“For people openly to say they’re atheist is similar to gay people coming out,” said Canon, of Louisville, who often wears a pin with a scarlet-letter “A” to prompt conversations about atheism. “It’s not popular at all for people to say they’re atheist, especially in these parts.”

He’s part of an increasingly vocal minority of atheists and other Americans who claim no religious affiliation. The percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans has doubled since 1990, rising to 16 percent. That growth represents one of the largest trends in American religion today, according to a poll published this year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Some of the religiously unaffiliated say they want to combat conservative Christians’ political activities in areas such as embryonic stem-cell research, creationism and courthouse postings of the Ten Commandments.

Religious groups, meanwhile, are responding by trying to make churches more culturally relevant or by finding common ground with atheists.

Among the religiously unaffiliated, about 2 percent each describe themselves as “atheist” or “agnostic,” according to the Pew survey. Most of the rest say they’re nothing in particular - and half of that group actually has religious beliefs or practices.

Members of a Louisville group, Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers, reflect the complexities presented in the Pew survey. Some meditate or practice Wiccan spiritual rituals, tied to the rhythms of nature. Several belong to Unitarian Universalist churches, which have no theological creed but proclaim values of love, justice and truth-seeking.

“We do believe in spirituality,” said David Cooper, 59, who belongs to Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church in Louisville. “It may not necessarily be a type of theistic spirituality.”

Religious affiliation matters in this election year because religious practice has been one of the leading indicators of voting patterns in recent years. The more frequently people attend church services, the more likely they are to vote Republican.

While Democrats are struggling to regain some of that voting share, they won the religiously unaffiliated vote by a 75-25 percent ratio nationwide in the 2006 congressional elections, according to exit polls.

A high-profile part of the “new atheism” is attacks on religious dogma mounted by such best-selling authors as Richard Dawkins (”The God Delusion”) and Christopher Hitchens (”God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”).

The Sept. 11 attacks by Muslim terrorists “brought a lot of people here,” said John Armstrong, one of the organizers of the Louisville atheist group. “But you really don’t even need to go to Sept. 11 for an example of why religious certainty about things nobody can be certain about is dangerous.”

Religious groups are responding in different ways.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention - alarmed by a 2004 report showing that one-third of Kentucky adults had little or no church connection - has seen many churches work to be more culturally relevant, said Larry Baker, director of new work and associational missions.

“We have to meet people exactly where they are, respect them as individuals and then share boldly and with clarity about what we believe about our relationship with Jesus Christ,” Baker said.

Other groups are finding common ground with atheists.

The Rev. David Emery, pastor of Middletown Christian Church in Louisville, recently led a sermon series on the best-selling atheist books. While he criticized them for ignoring religious people’s work to improve social justice, he applauded them for raising issues of religious violence and the problem of suffering.

Source — News-Press

VATICAN CITY (RNS) - Catholic-Jewish tensions over Pope Pius XII flared again after a church official suggested on Saturday (Oct. 18) that a Jerusalem museum exhibit about the World War II-era pontiff was an impediment to Israeli-Vatican relations.

The statement prompted a response from Israeli President Shimon Peres, and was followed by an Israeli Web site displaying an image of Pope Benedict XVI covered by a swastika.

Critics allege that Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, failed to do or say all he could to stop the Nazis’ persecution and genocide of the Jews. The late pope’s defenders counter that he heroically condemned anti-Semitism throughout Hitler’s reign, and both directly and indirectly saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

This latest episode in the long-running controversy began when the Rev. Peter Gumpel told the Italian news agency ANSA that Benedict would not visit Israel unless the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum removed a plaque suggesting that Pius had been indifferent to the survival of the Jews.

Gumpel is the official advocate for Pius in the process that will determine if the wartime pontiff becomes a saint. In May 2007, a Vatican body voted unanimously to declare Pius “venerable,” a prerequisite to sainthood, but Benedict has yet to sign the decree.

On Saturday, Gumpel said Benedict’s delay stemmed from concerns about the reactions of Jewish groups.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office, said afterwards in a statement that the Yad Vashem display was not the “determining factor” in Benedict’s decision about whether to make his first visit to Israel as pope.

Peres said on Monday (Oct. 20) that a papal “visit to Israel should not be tied to controversy over Pius XII.” Peres reiterated a standing invitation offered to Benedict when the two met at the Vatican in September 2007.

Also on Monday, an Israeli Web site supportive of the country’s governing Kadima party briefly displayed a photograph of Benedict superimposed with a Nazi swastika, but removed the image shortly after it was publicly condemned by the party’s leader, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Source — The Pew Forums

EXCLUSIVE:

A U.S. military “Red Team” charged with challenging conventional thinking says that words like “jihad” and “Islamist” are needed in discussing 21st-century terrorism and that federal agencies that avoid the words soft-pedaled the link between religious extremism and violent acts.

“We must reject the notion that Islam and Arabic stand apart as bodies of knowledge that cannot be critiqued or discussed as elements of understanding our enemies in this conflict,” said the internal report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The report, “Freedom of Speech in Jihad Analysis: Debunking the Myth of Offensive Words,” was written by unnamed civilian analysts and contractors for the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. It is thought to be the first official document to challenge those in the government who seek to downplay the role of Islam in inspiring some terrorist violence.

“The fact is our enemies cite the source of Islam as the foundation for their global jihad,” the report said. “We are left with the responsibility of portraying our enemies in an honest and accurate fashion.”

The report contributes to an ongoing debate within the U.S. government and military over the roots of terrorism, its relationship to Islam and how best to counter extremist ideology.

It cites two Bush administration documents that appear to minimize anylink between radical Islam and terrorism.

A January 2008 memorandum from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties stated that unidentified American Muslims recommended that the U.S. government avoid using the terms “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist” or “holy warrior,” asserting that would create a “negative climate” and spawn acts of harassment and discrimination.

Dan Sutherland, Homeland Security officer for civil rights and civil liberties, said the document is not department policy.

“This was a compilation of recommendations and thoughts provided to us by some prominent American Muslim thinkers and never was intended to be Department of Homeland Security policy,” he said in an interview.

“If a paper from another part of government says this doesn’t make sense, that’s a valid point. This memo is a thought piece meant to stir discussion.”

Mr. Sutherland said he agrees that a debate on terrorist terminology is needed in describing “the very serious threat we face.”

A second document mentioned by the report was developed for the State Department by the National Counterterrorism Center’s Extremist Messaging Branch.

It urges officials to use the term “violent extremist” and never to use “jihadist” because that will “legitimize” terrorists.

Michael E. Leiter, director of the counterterrorism center, questioned some of the memo’s conclusions during a July 10 Senate hearing, said spokesman Carl Kropf.

“I do think you cannot separate out the fact that the terror fight we are fighting today involves Islam as a religion,” Mr. Leiter said under questioning from Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent. He added, however, “the ideology which motivates these terrorists has very little to do in reality with the religion of Islam.”

Oneof the most sensitive issues in the new report involves the word jihad.

An Arabic word derived from the verb meaning “to strive,” it appears about 30 times in the Koran, but “the preponderance of references refer to internal striving to prove one’s piety,” said William Graham, a professor of Middle East Studies at Harvard University.

About 10 references are clearly to fighting, said Mr. Graham, who is also dean of the university’s divinity school.

The word, often translated as “holy war,” has been used in a military context throughout Muslim history, said Princeton University Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis, a leading authority on Islam.

Several terrorist groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, include the word in their titles.

The Red Team report said jihad is an obligation of all Muslims under Islamic law and must be performed “until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.”

However, the Koran states that the embrace of Islam must be voluntary, Mr. Graham said.

Jim Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said he had no problem using words such as jihad, provided it was made clear that militant groups were misusing the terms to justify their violent actions.

“They’re not talking about jihad in a theological sense,” Mr. Zogby said. “Jihad means to struggle or strive for the good and against evil. These people are talking about violent revolution.”

Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, cautioned against interpreting the debate as a dispute between those who think Islam as a whole is bad and those who think Islam as a whole is good.

“Islam is manifestly in crisis, with bad people who are Muslims fighting against good people who are Muslims. That should be the point - how to mobilize the good people against the bad people,” Mr. Schwartz said.

The Red Team report said the government documents in question reflect “the views and opinions of a very small [number] of Americans whose contributions may have escaped critical review. … While there is concern that we not label all Muslims as Islamist terrorists, it is proper to address certain aspects of violence as uniquely Islamic,” the report says.

The report notes that some terms for terrorists, such as “Islamo-fascist,” are “conspicuously offensive.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent U.S. Muslim group, has argued that government terminology should minimize any connection between Islam and terrorism to avoid fanning religious hatred.

A council spokesman said Corey Saylor, CAIR’s legislative director, recently stated the group’s views on the issue in a Detroit News Op-Ed article.

Mr. Saylor said CAIR opposes the use of “jihadist” and other Islamic terms because the use of non-Islamic terms “serves the strategic purpose of isolating extremists and removing the false cloak of religiosity that they use to justify their barbarism.”

Marine Corps Maj. Joseph D. Kloppel, a Central Command spokesman, said Red Team reports “are often controversial.”

“But the resulting debate sharpens reasoning, forces intellectual integrity, and improves decisionmaking and subsequent action,” he said in an e-mail, noting that its products are “designed for internal use” and not meant to represent the personal views of the Centcom commander.

Source — The Washington Times

It has become commonplace in American politics: Certain Roman Catholic bishops declare that the faithful should cast their ballots on the basis of a limited number of “nonnegotiable issues,” notably opposition to abortion. Conservative Catholics cheer, more liberal Catholics howl. And that is usually the end of the story.

Not this year. Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting is by no means a Catholic commandment.

In an interview yesterday, Gabino Zavala, an auxiliary bishop in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, said his fellow bishops have long insisted that “we’re not a one-issue church,” a view reflected in their 2007 document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

“But that’s not always what comes out,” says Zavala, who is also bishop-president of the Catholic peace group Pax Christi USA. “What I believe, and what the church teaches, is that one abortion is too many. That’s why I believe abortion is so important. But in light of this, there are many other issues we need to bring up, other issues we should consider, other issues that touch the reality of our lives.”

Those issues, Bishop Zavala said, include racism, torture, genocide, immigration, war and the impact of the economic downturn “on the most vulnerable among us, the elderly, poor children, single mothers.”

“We know that neither of the political parties supports everything the church teaches,” he added. “We are not going to create a culture of life if we don’t talk about all the life issues, beginning with abortion but including all of them.”

Zavala was careful to say that he did not want to take issue with any of his fellow bishops. But his view contrasts with that of others in the hierarchy.

This month, for example, Bishop Joseph F. Martino of the Scranton (Pa.) Diocese issued a letter warning that “being ‘right’ on taxes, education, health care, immigration and the economy fails to make up for the error of disregarding the value of a human life.” He added: “It is a tragic irony that ‘pro-choice’ candidates have come to support homicide — the gravest injustice a society can tolerate — in the name of ’social justice.’ ”

Bishop Zavala’s desire to speak out with an alternative view is a sign of how much has changed in four years: Progressive Catholics are now as organized as conservative Catholics were in 2004. At Web sites such as http://ProLifeProObama.com, they are arguing that the abortion question does not trump all other concerns.

The impact of the new Catholic politics could be substantial. Catholics are often a decisive electoral group partly because church membership ranges from upscale to working-class whites, a large group of Latinos, and a significant number of African Americans.

Catholics typically make up about a quarter of the electorate, and they are strategically located. White (non-Latino) Catholics are important in such swing states as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while Latino Catholics make up a notable share of the populations of New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Florida.

Polls have varied in measuring the Catholic shift toward the Democrats, but Obama seems to be running ahead of John Kerry’s performance in 2004. According to the network exit polls, Bush carried 52 percent of the Catholic vote to 47 percent for Kerry. By contrast, a mid-October Pew Research Center survey showed Obama leading John McCain among Catholics by 55 percent to 35 percent.

Post surveys over the same period have found more modest Catholic gains for Obama. A Post tracking poll released yesterday showed Obama and McCain splitting the Catholic vote at 48 percent each. Obama’s Catholic share probably stands somewhere between the Pew and Post numbers. But even a split among Catholics could mark a sufficient improvement over Kerry’s performance to tip key states the Democrat’s way.

In many respects, Catholics simply reflect the country as a whole in moving toward the Democrats because of frustrations with the economy and the Bush years. But the Catholic debate entails a very particular argument over what counts as a commitment to life. To an unexpected degree, this election could hang on the struggle of Catholic voters with their priorities and their consciences.

Source — Washington Post

As the words to the Christian rock song fade from the giant screens at Mountain Springs church, Pastor Steve Holt steps forward to speak to his congregation. These are perilous times, he says, but he urges them not to despair.

“There are still two weeks before the election,” he says, before announcing a week of fasting and prayer in the run-up to polling day.

For conservative Christians, such as Holt and his congregation, the prospect of a Democratic victory represents sheer calamity. Yet Evangelicals have not been natural supporters of John McCain, doubting the Republican’s commitment to banning abortion and gay marriage.

But conservative Christians believe a Barack Obama presidency would roll back a generation of political gains which culminated with their privileged position in George Bush’s White House.

“I don’t think we are going to have any influence with Barack Obama in the White House,” Holt told the Guardian.

The election represented a paradigm shift for the US as well as for evangelicals. “I think there is a backlash against Bush because of the economy and I think frankly because of a lack of leadership,” Holt said. “There is a sense we are in a position of weakness right now.”

A political forum at the church saw bewilderment and frustration among members of Holt’s flock as they tried to come to terms with Obama’s widening lead over McCain - and the potential loss of their power in Washington.

“Has Obama through mass hypnosis figured out a way to bypass the critical faculties of all Americans?” asked Brian Sherman, a church volunteer.

Mark Andre, a commodities trader, said he had not started out a supporter of McCain - though the senator was well liked by his Democratic friends before the campaign. “It’s almost like Democrats became hateful of McCain. Has it been Sarah Palin and her stance, or is it just Obama and his ideology? What happened to all the Democrats who loved McCain?”

Political soul-searching is under way at conservative churches across the US - but nowhere more so than Colorado Springs, a town known locally as the “evangelical mecca”.

Local government officials lured conservative Christian groups here with tax breaks in the 1980s. Colorado Springs is now headquarters for the most powerful Christian organisations in the US.

The town and surrounding areas remain defiantly conservative in a state that has been leaning Democratic in state elections for the last four years since voting Bush in 2000 and 2004. John Morris, the chairman of the county Democratic party, called the town “a black hole of Republican extremism”.

Colorado is now emerging as a key battleground state, and Republicans are counting on the evangelicals to help McCain hang on. The party has sent emissaries to 400 churches over the past few days to recruit volunteers for “evangelical-to-evangelical” phone banks. It has also used the churches to generate excitement about Palin’s rally schedule yesterday, handing out tickets after morning services on Sunday.

In an ordinary election that grassroots organisation would make a difference. Evangelicals consider it a “Christian duty” to vote. Past elections have seen high turnouts among conservative voters - especially if there were ballots on gay marriage or abortion.

In an attempt to bring out the faithful this year conservatives in Colorado drafted a ballot measure that confers human rights on a fertilised egg from the moment of conception.

Church leaders have also tried to impress on their followers that - even if they are still cool towards McCain - conservatives cannot afford to have Obama in the White House.

But with election officials predicting unprecedented turnout across Colorado - up to 90% in heavily Democratic Denver and Boulder -the tested Republican strategy of winning elections by getting out the evangelical vote is unlikely to work. That vote would be simply swamped by a very high turnout.

There are also signs that evangelical power over the ballot box could be waning - even in Colorado Springs.

Recent years have seen more Democrats in the area. There have also been signs of an internal revolt against local conservative Republican politicians.

Over the years, the influx of evangelicals to Colorado Springs shifted the local party establishment to the right. Party politics increasingly revolved around the emotive issues such as abortion. That alienated more traditional Republicans who wanted their officials to focus on the economy and infrastructure.

Last month, Jan Martin, a lifelong Republican and an elected city council official, announced she was supporting Obama because she believed the party had moved too far to the right.

“I think Bush has been too extreme, and he has catered to this black-and-white extreme view of conservative Christian thinking. The leadership of the local party is still very conservative and still very much us against them.”

A number of evangelical leaders have also begun asking whether their movement has drifted too far to the right. Some church leaders in Colorado Springs have called for the evangelical focus to be broadened beyond abortion and gay marriage and address issues such as climate change and poverty.

Few are willing to publicly write off McCain and the current brand of Republicanism. But in the political forum at Mountain Springs, local Republican elected officials were already discussing how they would operate under an Obama administration.

“God forbid, but if it comes about we are going to have to be speaking out like never before,” said Doug Lamborn, the local Republican member of Congress.

Republicans needed to update their methods of communications by launching more conservative blogs, added Amy Stephens, a local state representative.

Holt was also now moving to reconcile himself to defeat. “This could be the best thing that ever happened to the evangelical cause,” he said. “We’re used to being against the tide.”

Source — Guardian