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The following interview with a person who deals with the church related issues on a daily basis, provides us wih an insight into the state of the church at present. It is interesting to note that the issues and the problems that they are dealing with are not unlike the ones that we deal with. These range from ethics to faith and doubt. What is even more striking is that there are areas such as shared ethics where there is unity with the Jews although they disagree upon doctrines particularly with reference to Christ as a Messiah. In the context of understanding and promoting pluralism it is a very useful article.

'These Are My Struggles'
Popular radio preacher Chuck Swindoll explains that being a Christian doesn't mean eradicating all of life's problems.

Interview by Rebecca Phillips



Chuck Swindoll is one of the foremost Christian radio evangelists in the country, reaching an audience of millions through his internationally syndicated radio show, "Insight for Living." He is also senior pastor of Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas and chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary. Swindoll's latest contribution to his canon of more than 30 books is "Getting Through the Tough Stuff," an inspirational tome about how Jesus and the Bible can help Christians overcome struggles with anxiety, doubt, temptation, divorce, and other life challenges. Swindoll recently spoke with Beliefnet about his experience with these struggles and the relationship between faith and doubt.

What motivated you to write this book?
I wrote on getting through the tough stuff because there's so much of the tough stuff that makes up life. It is easy for Christians to have the false impression that once we have established a relationship with Christ, which we believe sets us right with God, the problems of life will somehow scoot away or they will slowly be removed from our lives. I find people surprised to hear that Jesus never promised that. In fact, sometimes when a person does decide to get serious about his faith, to trust in Christ and him alone for eternal life, that causes problems. It brings about misunderstanding, and sometimes it leads to confrontation, and a number of the things I deal with. Doubt is a part of it, and you don't get removed from the reality of death or pain. I decided to write and explain these are not exceptions; this is the rule. Life doesn't work out nice and neatly for those who are sincere about their faith. As a matter of fact, it often turns very serious as a person becomes serious about his faith.

As you say, people often think that finding faith in Jesus will make life easier. In your experience, has finding out that that doesn't happen ever caused people to lose faith? Certainly. There's a lot of disillusionment. Someone may watch a televangelist, and the televangelist's message may suggest, 'If you do this, and you do that, you're on easy street.' The idea is this is a no-lose deal, a no-brainer, 'I'm going to be healed.' But the reality is that they aren't healed. That leads to disillusionment. The book says, come back to basics: Life is tough.

You mentioned misunderstanding. In your book you say that Jesus was the most misunderstood individual who ever lived. What do you mean by that?
First of all, in my view of the scriptures, he was sinless. Being sinless, you would think he would get enormous respect, that there would be a massive following, that there would be those who would want to be a part of that life and yield to him. On the contrary, from the very beginning, his life was marked by those who saw him not as a virgin-born child, but as just another carpenter's son who claimed to be messiah. Many people in his own day saw him as an illegitimate child. So he's misunderstood as far as his birth is concerned, and also his purpose and his mission. That's what drove him to the cross--misunderstanding. That's why he said, 'Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing.'

Do you think Jesus is still misunderstood today?
Surely, mainly by those who have never investigated his life, or they've investigated with a preconceived caricature and haven't allowed the scriptures to speak for themselves. That's not fair. If I'm going to make a judgment call, I need to investigate the evidence to form an opinion.

You begin the book with the problem of temptation. Why did you choose that topic?
There is no order of importance in the book. I could have started with inadequacy, which is probably a problem for more people than the onslaught of temptation. I do find in life that temptations are numerous, whether it's toward eating too much, saying too much, going too far. The temptation to be greedy, envious of others, the temptation to have what somebody else has--these are all very common, and I thought it would be a good place to begin. Plus [temptation is present in] the life of Christ, as his ministry begins. He was taken into the wilderness for 40 days and tempted by the devil.

You were obviously very moved by Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
I was. As I state in the book, I've never witnessed anything that comes anywhere near depicting what I believe the New Testament teaches regarding the suffering Christ went through. I've preached on it for over 40 years, and every year before Easter, I address the subject of the crucifixion. But I have never seen it portrayed in such a vivid and realistic manner. I don't think he took liberties with the text. I don't know him, so I'm not carrying a torch for Mel Gibson. I just find when I study the scriptures and I read the rather antiseptic term, 'they scourged him,' you can pass over that word that we rarely use today and think little of it. When you see it for 35 minutes, like in the scenes in the film, it does something to you. I think it's a remarkable work. I finished that film in tears.

In your chapter about doubt, you write about reconciling faith and doubt. How can the two co-exist?
Not every Christian finds it easy to believe. Obviously [this is a problem for] everybody, but I'm just going to stay with the Christian ranks. When you read the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, a non-reflective kind of person will think, "Gee, I would have loved to have been there." The reflective person will say, "Hold on. How'd that happen? Was he really dead?" Those are all thoughts of doubt. [In John 20] Thomas said, "If I see the scars in his hands and put my hand at his side and see where the spear was driven into him, I will not believe." Thomas was a reflective person. So when Jesus came to him, he didn't shame him. He said to him, 'Here, reach out your hand and touch the scar. I want you to see this, Thomas." He blessed him, he didn't make him ashamed. But he said, even more blessed are those who have not seen and believed. There will only be a few Thomases that have the privilege of touching the hands and the feet and the side. But the rest of us must believe by faith. In my book, this chapter says doubt is ok; it's not something that's going to send you to perdition. It's part of being a reflective person.

Do you think Christians today doubt enough?
That's hard for me to answer. I find that I'm around people who are a little too quick to believe. They say 'because I hear it from some televangelist, I'm now going to believe it, or because some Christian author wrote this, I'm supposed to believe it.' So in that sense, I think too many people are gullible. The key word here is discernment. We need discernment in what we see and what we hear and what we believe.

Turning to your chapter on prejudice, you write that your own understanding of Jesus overcoming prejudice had a lot to do with your own overcoming prejudice when you grew up in the South. How so?
I'm a child of the mid-30s and I had parents whose roots are in the deep South. So I heard statements and words used that, as I grew up, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with. It especially helped me to do a stint in the Marine Corps, where fighting right alongside me were people of color. If you do enough of that, you become colorblind. You realize there are magnificent people out there of all colors, and there are some bad people out there, of all colors. Prejudice is a learned trait. You're not born prejudiced; you're taught it. If you're standing there as a five-year-old child in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, you're learning to hate African-Americans. If you never see that, if you're around parents who teach you to love one another, it doesn't dawn on you not to come to the aid of someone in need or not to talk to someone because of color. I think there are few people like Christ who can get you beyond that problem.

In that same chapter, you imply that Jews are still prejudiced against Jesus.
Some are. You've got to admit that when there are Orthodox Jews who are around Messianic Jews, that is people who were born Jewish but who have come to faith in Christ, there is a hatred for them.

You think that's because they have a hatred of Jesus?
I think it very well may be. They do not believe that the one who came is in fact Messiah. They're still looking for the Messiah. If you place your faith and trust in one you've called Messiah, they believe that's a false messiah. So, you ask if that's a hatred toward Jesus or toward them [Messianic Jews]. I think it's a disrespect toward them, and if we're going to use the word hate, I think the hate would be directed toward the one in whom they believed. They resent the thought that the other person would trust in one who claimed to be Messiah who they say is not Messiah.

Well, hatred of Jesus certainly isn't part of the many alliances forming between Orthodox Jews and conservative Christians these days. They're coming together on gay marriage, on abortion, on Israel. How do you view these alliances?
What they're agreeing on is ethical issues, moral issues. I'd be the first to say that some with whom I would not agree spiritually, as it relates to their rejection of Christ, I would agree with their position as it relates to abortion, or one of the issues you have mentioned. I think we can align with one another on those issues, and that's great. I don't think that just because a person rejects Christ that he doesn't have any opinion I can respect or he has nothing to offer that I can't learn from. That's stupidity and that's ignorance.

You've said that one of the most important principles for life is that marriage is forever, to the same person. But your book devotes entire chapters to getting through divorce and remarriage. What do you really think about marriage?
If it's an ideal world, then the ideal plan is one man for one woman for all of life. However, the ideal is that I never have germs. Sin is a reality. People disobey. Affairs happen. Broken vows occur. I think because of that, there is the permission on rare occasions for divorce and remarriage. I think it's the exception, rather than the rule. It's permitted rather than applauded. But I've even married couples who have been married before, if I've been convinced that they've thought it through, that they had reasons for divorce. In certain cases, you're not under bondage to stay with a person.

Which of the topics that you cover in the book have special meaning in your own life?
Have you personally struggled with any of these issues?
You bet. I've been misunderstood. I struggle at times with anxiety and I worry over things. I've felt ashamed over things I've done; until I've made it right, the shame has sort of dragged me down like an anchor. Thankfully, I haven't gone through divorce or the struggle of remarriage. I've known pain, I've worked my way through prejudice. I'm a child of the South and my parents were prejudiced, and I've learned to get beyond the battle of prejudice, but I've known many who haven't because I minister and live in the southern states. Hypocrisy is always a battle for people, along with feelings of inadequacy. These are mine--I just let you listen in on my own struggles.

You offer specific Bible verses to help readers through each of these issues. Were these the same Bible verses that you turned to yourself?
Absolutely. When people ask me how I knew what to speak about on a particular day, or how I knew what to write on, I'll often say, I'll let you listen in on what I needed to hear. I'll let you read what I needed to read. I'll be honest with you--there are times when an author finds himself or herself more strengthened by what he's written than anybody who reads it.

Before Jesus died, He willed us His Peace...He wants us to have peace in the midst of our current circumstances--peace in the morning, at night and all times in between. Peace is our inheritance! And it is a wonderful possession.

-Joyce Meyer

Is the above description of Christianity any different than Islam?

ShamsB wrote:"but they killed him not, nor crucified him, "

Hmm..Kmaherali..that is pretty clear that Allah says he wasn't killed nor crucified....there is actual some historical fact that Jesus was taken away to India/China..there is a tomb in Kashmir that is rumored to be of Christ..another myth has him escaping to Europe...
I personally don't believe Christ was crucified....Christ was a title given to anyone that was crucified in those days..crucifixion being a common punishment..the Romans must have crucified anywhere upto 20-30 men a day...remember christianity wasn't started by Jesus..it was preached and started by Saul of Tarsus who later became Paul..who had never met Jesus in real life..he had a vision of Jesus on his way to Damascus after the stoning of Stephen the Martyr.
The authors of the new testament are also in doubt..notice like Islamic Law..Jewish Law dictates that there be 4 male witnesses...thus the 4 gospels...the bible was also canonized by men seeking to consolidate power in the time of Constantine...so Gospels and books were left out...
in terms of the authorship of the bible..2 of the 4 gospel writers were illiterate....
There is also a historical theory that Paul and Jesus were one and the same person...don't know if that holds water but research is going on...


Shams (the OTHER Shams)

This theory would make it look like Jesus was a coward in the face of death! Why would he escape crucification and let his followers be crucified instead? The other issue is whether this fact is believable at all. Against the background of our own history this is not beyond belief. Our Imams have sacrificed their lives for the cause of justice and peace and also to demonstrate the glory of the hereafter and the futility of this life. I think this is the central message of the event - death does not exist hence "but they killed him not, nor crucified him, ".

It is true that Jesus travelled extensively from age 13- 30 to avoid marriage and gain more knowledge and insight. There is evidence in the writings of some temples of India, that Isa Nabi had actually been there.

The following tribute to Pope John Paul II brings into focus the historical relationship between Christianity and Islam. The relationship has been defined by the wars of crusaders and colonialism and all the related hatred and ill feelings. The Pope was trying to change that and I hope the future will move in this direction and a better relationship is established.


Bridge Builder to the Muslim World

Pope John Paul II broke a thousand years of mutual distrust and began to heal the wounds of the church's demonization of Islam.

By Akbar S. Ahmed



In the wall-to-wall coverage of Pope John Paul II’s life and death, media commentators talked of his charisma, his rock star status, his global tours and influence, and the fact that he was the first non-Italian pope in many centuries. Some talked of the pope visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem to apologize to the Jews on behalf of his community–long overdue and fully deserved.

Yet in the torrent of words from commentators, there was a resounding silence about the elephant in the room: relations between Christianity and Islam. Despite John Paul II's historic gestures of penitence for the church's long-standing demonization of Islam, one heard virtually nothing about this outstanding hallmark of his pontificate. While there are many possible explanations for this disturbing absence of interest and understanding about Islam on the part of Western media, one clear cause is a general psychological revulsion against Islam after 9/11. The resulting aversion has discouraged an examination of the complex relationship between Christians and Muslims, rooted in a thousand years of history.

The institution of the papacy has had a direct impact on the relationship between Christianity and Islam for the past thousand years. No pope has ever been neutral toward Islam. Popes encouraged, launched, and led the Crusades. They have vilified Islam as a false religion. Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) identified the Prophet Muhammad as the Anti-Christ. Such pronouncements by successive popes created a climate of hatred among Christians toward Muslims.

In 1099, when the Crusaders took Jerusalem, they massacred 40,000 Muslims–men women, and children. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the holiest church in Christendom, the site of Calvary, was a pool of blood. The Crusaders found Jews huddled in the main synagogue in Jerusalem and burned them to death, dancing around the pyre and singing Te Deum. After the killing, the looting started. The mosque of Umar was sacked; the tomb of Abraham was destroyed. “In the Temple and the porch of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridal reins,” wrote Raymond of Aguilers, an eyewitness chronicler of the First Crusade. Women were not spared, he observed: “The Franks did no other harm to the women whom they found in the enemy camp, save that they ran their lances through their bellies.” The Jews were perhaps the worst hit: “To the Jews of Palestine the white knights of Europe came as the ravens of the apocalypse.”

Little wonder that for Muslims, Christianity came to be equated with savagery and barbarism. The Muslim world looked for a champion, and they found one in Saladin (Salahuddin), who was able to recapture Jerusalem in 1187.

In contrast to the Crusaders' rapacious behavior toward non-Christians and their holy places, Saladin protected the Holy Sepulcher and other holy Christian sites and forced exemplary behavior on his soldiers. Saladin also allowed the Jews back to Jerusalem. James Reston, Jr., in his book "Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade," said of Saladin, “By his amnesties and various charities toward his enemies he secured forever his reputation for gentility and wisdom.”

Saladin’s recapture of Jerusalem and his generosity to the captured Crusaders created the mythology of the pious, brave, and generous Muslim ruler. Up to our time, many Muslim rulers have fallen back to the mythology around Saladin: from Nasser in Egypt to Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat more recently.

Until John Paul II, no pope had reviewed the terrible savagery inflicted on the people of the Middle East–Jews, Christians, and Muslims–and either apologized for or regretted it. This left a dark and bitter legacy between the great faiths. Muslims invariably complained that Westerners were essentially “Crusaders.” That is why Osama bin Laden and others who fight against the West still refer to Westerners as “Crusaders,” arguing that the West can only know Muslims in the relationship of conqueror or aggressor.
One of the consequences of the Crusades was the shift in the position and status of Jesus within Islam. The Qur'an refers to Jesus with reverence, and there is an entire chapter on his mother Mary. The Prophet of Islam said that there was no one who had more respect or reverence for Jesus than himself. Sufis in particular have written mystic verses praising Jesus in glowing terms.

But the Crusades identified Christianity, and its savior, with cruelty and violence in Muslims' minds. In time and over the centuries, the love and respect for Jesus in Islam became muted. By the time the West re-emerged in the Muslim world as a colonial force in the 19th century, and once again the soldier and trader were followed by the missionary, Muslim suspicions of Jesus were confirmed. Few Muslims even remembered the deep respect for Jesus that Islam teaches.

In 1981 John Paul II was shot by a young Turkish man, Mehmet Ali Agca. The assassination attempt still remains somewhat of a mystery. There is little doubt that there was a bigger plot, possibly organized by the Soviets, who feared the pope and his crusade against their evil society. But when he survived the attack, the Pope focused on the human story, rather than on politics. He visited Agca, his would-be assassin, in prison and forgave him. This was truly the act of a man touched by Jesus himself.

The Vatican's 1999 declaration, “Memory and Reconciliation,” subtitled "The Church and the Faults of the Past," which followed the 1992 apology for the persecution of the 17th-century astronomer and physicist Galileo, was a profoundly important act of grappling with the dark episodes of church history as part of a process the Holy See called “historical purification.” In the litany of atrocities against Jews, Muslims, women, and ethnic groups, the Crusades were specifically mentioned. For the first time in church history, the Vatican, under John Paul II, apologized for what the Crusaders had done. Its impact was enormous, signifying a tectonic shift in Christian attitudes toward Islam. In guiding the church toward this repentance, Pope John Paul II allowed Muslims to re-connect with one of their own main theological figures–Jesus.

In the emotion and anger after 9/11, Pope John Paul II once again showed wisdom and compassion toward the Muslim world. While American and British leaders talked of revenge and were swift to act punishing those who may have had nothing to do with the terrible act of Sept. 11, the pope talked of the need for understanding and a nonviolent response. This would also be his position when he consistently proved to be the biggest critic of the war on Iraq. It took great moral courage for the pope to stand against the tidal wave of emotion that was swirling about in the West against the Muslim world.

The new pope needs to build on the bridge to Islam established by Pope John Paul II. He must start by studying about Islam, talking to Muslims, and visiting Muslim lands. Much work has to be done, but the stakes are high.

ShamsB wrote:Great article..but isn't it a little disappointing that the late Pontiff apologized to the Jews for all the atrocities commited over the centuries by the Catholic Church on the Jews..yet didn't apologize to the muslims....

S.

I thought he did according to the following statement in the article:

"The Vatican's 1999 declaration, “Memory and Reconciliation,” subtitled "The Church and the Faults of the Past," which followed the 1992 apology for the persecution of the 17th-century astronomer and physicist Galileo, was a profoundly important act of grappling with the dark episodes of church history as part of a process the Holy See called “historical purification.” In the litany of atrocities against Jews, Muslims, women, and ethnic groups, the Crusades were specifically mentioned. For the first time in church history, the Vatican, under John Paul II, apologized for what the Crusaders had done. Its impact was enormous, signifying a tectonic shift in Christian attitudes toward Islam. In guiding the church toward this repentance, Pope John Paul II allowed Muslims to re-connect with one of their own main theological figures–Jesus."

tasbiha wrote:Let us not forget that Saladin screwed the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt.

When Saladin invaded Egypt, the Fatimid dynasty was already in turmoil and decline. Perhaps Saladin just 'nailed the coffin'.

I am more optimistic about the relationship between Islam, Christianity and Jews. We have more in common than the apparent differences. As MHI said at Brown University, "We have much to build with. A common Abrahamic, monotheistic tradition. Common ethical principles, founded on shared human values. Common problems of yesterday, resolved together. Common challenges of tomorrow, that we can best face together."

The following article that appeared in today's issue of the Calgary Herald discusses issues around the election of the new pope. The inter faith relationships, especially the relationship with the Muslim world is going to be a critical factor - an optimistic outlook for world peace.

Next pope expected to reach out to Islam

Brian Murphy
The Associated Press


April 17, 2005


They represent John Paul II's last major stamp on the future of the church: 26 cardinals from six continents, added to the list of papal electors 18 months ago.

These latest cardinals, who account for nearly a quarter of the expected 115-member conclave beginning Monday, include some of the Vatican's leading voices protesting the U.S.-led war in Iraq and defending the church's moral teachings.

One issue stands out vividly: the need to strengthen bonds with Muslims or risk a more polarized and dangerous world.

Some of the most dynamic prelates in the group have been active on the front lines of Christian-Muslim conflict in Africa or involved in interfaith outreach.

Their backgrounds reinforce the perception that questions about Islam could exert a strong influence on the conclave in the way Cold War politics entered into the election of John Paul in 1978.

"John Paul II made the Vatican a geopolitical force," said Jo Renee Formicola, a professor of religious and political studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. "There is no bigger question now in the West than building better contacts with the Islamic world. The Vatican recognizes this."

The late pope took historic steps to open channels between Islam and the Vatican, including a 2001 trip to Syria when he became the first pontiff to enter a mosque.

But the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the growing strength of radical Islam have raised calls in the Vatican for more comprehensive contacts with mainstream Islamic leaders.

A possible papal candidate who could benefit from that new focus is Vatican-based Francis Cardinal Arinze, 72, of Nigeria, who has led inter-religious dialogue since the 1980s, and whose nation is a fault line between Christianity and Islam.

Also, Belgian Godfried Cardinal Danneels, 71, is seen to possess diplomatic finesse for a papacy that may require extensive contacts with Islamic leaders.

Fourteen of the new cardinals come from Europe, including six from Italy.

The others are spread across the globe: three each from Latin America, Africa and Asia; two from North America and one from Australia.

Interest in advancing contacts with Islam links many of the new cardinals, elevated during ceremonies to mark the 25th year of John Paul's papacy.

Among them is French Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, who served as a top Vatican diplomat from 1990 to 2003 and was the pope's main envoy for the Middle East. He has called interfaith relations an "enormous task" for the next papacy and urged majority Muslim nations to resist "second-class" status for Christians.

Other cardinals from France -- Marseilles Archbishop Bernard Panafieu and Lyons Archbishop Philippe Barbarin -- have taken strong stands in support of better contacts with mainstream Muslims.

For Panafieu, the issue is at his doorstep. Nearly 17 per cent of the French port is now Muslim.

Last year he fought a French law outlawing Muslim head scarves and other religious symbols in public schools and has since urged the government to "act through persuasion rather than by compulsion" to help Muslim immigrants adjust to the West.

Spanish Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo, archbishop of Seville, was formerly head of the archdiocese in Tangiers, Morocco, with only a few thousand Catholics. He has warned that "ignorance and neglect" between the faiths needs attention.

Croatian Cardinal Josip Bozanic is vice-president of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe, which holds a series of conferences on interfaith issues. Bozanic has joined other religious leaders trying to rebuild trust in the Balkans following the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia.

But the strongest messages come from two new African cardinals.

In Sudan, the nation's first cardinal, Gabriel Zubeir Wako, has been caught up in more than two decades of war that has claimed more than two million lives.

A peace pact in January was reached between the Islamist government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, which has battled since 1983 for greater rights and a share of wealth for southern Sudanese of Christian and animist faiths.

But Wako fears the deal could unravel without better contact between Sudan's Christians and the majority Muslims, whom he has accused of trying to "colonize" the entire country.

Another new cardinal, Anthony Olubunmi Okogie of Nigeria, begged in 1991 for calm after a round of Muslim-Christian clashes. "We cannot take any more of this," he said at the time.

Other Contenders

Here are some of the front-runners, as picked by Irish bookmakers.

- Dionigi Tettamanzi, 69, the theologically conservative archbishop of Milan who helped John Paul with some of his encyclicals, disqualified by being the odds-on front-runner.

- Claudio Hummes, 70, Franciscan archbishop of Sao Paulo, a theological conservative known for defending the Movimento dos Sem Terra (landless movement).

- Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, 62, of Honduras, former head of the Latin American Bishops and an opponent of globalization, possibly too young.

- Joseph Ratzinger, 78, the critical theologian heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; called the "panzer cardinal" and a lightning-rod for liberal outrage.

- Jean-Marie Lustiger, 79, the Jewish convert archbishop of Paris whose mother died at Auschwitz; a human rights champion.

- Angelo Sodano, 77, Vatican's secretary of state, former No. 2, likely disqualified by his prominence and accumulated enemies.

- Godfried Danneels, 71, a liberal Belgian archbishop, probably disqualified for advocating women in the curia and the use of condoms in fighting AIDS.

- Giacomo Biffi, 76, retired archbishop of Bologna, a champion of Opus Dei and other new orthodox movements.

- Ivan Dias, 69, archbishop of Mumbai, a seasoned church diplomat and theological conservative, but with limited pastoral experience.

This story features a factbox "Other Contenders".

© The Calgary Herald 2005

The following article discusses the challenges facing the new pope as he embarks upon his new mission. One of the major issues will have to be the rapid expansion of Islam globally but especially at the heart of Christianity. How will the pope react to this situation?

Soul Searching
Islam's Global Gains
Pressure Catholics
To Rethink Strategy

Next Pope Could Lead Vatican
To Adopt Tougher Stance;
Mosque Returns to Granada
Church's Lost 'Missionary Zeal'
By GABRIEL KAHN in Vatican City, KEITH JOHNSON in Granada, Spain, and ANDRÉS CALA in Paris
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 19, 2005; Page A1

In 1492, Christian armies drove the last Muslim rulers out of the ancient hilltop city of Granada in a victory still celebrated as the birth of modern Spain. Now, Islam is back, this time making more peaceful inroads by adding adherents among the local immigrant population and also some Spaniards. Two years ago, a mosque, the first to stand in Granada in five centuries, was built on the site of a former Catholic church.

"It's clear that Islam is eating into Catholic turf," says Malik Abderraman, the president of the foundation that runs the mosque and himself a Spanish convert to Islam.

For more than 40 years, the Roman Catholic Church has embraced a seductive theory: By extending an olive branch, Christianity could lay to rest its 1,400-year history of conflict with Islam. The church created a new curial office dedicated to fostering a robust dialogue with Islam, as well as other world religions, with the goal of achieving mutual understanding and peace. It welcomed the building of mosques in Europe and spoke out against religious discrimination of Muslims.


The recently constructed Grand Mosque, built on the site of a former church in Granada, Spain


Now, as Catholic cardinals meet in the Vatican to choose the next pope, there is a growing feeling that these efforts to reach out to Islam have backfired. While some Muslims have embraced the call for dialogue, many Catholics now fret that the conciliatory approach has tied the church's hands, preventing it from keeping up with Islam's rapid growth, particularly in parts of the world once dominated by Catholicism. Some critics also believe the softer stance should be more contingent on a reciprocal tolerance of Catholics in the Muslim world.

"Dialogue is not sufficient on its own. What effect does it have?" asks Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, who was once in charge of overseeing the well-being of Catholic communities from Turkey to Iraq, in an interview in February. "Finding common ground with Islam, in a way that includes mutual respect, is not easy."

The concerns underscore how Islam is looming as one of the defining issues for Catholicism in the 21st century, in much the same way that communism was in the last century. Islam offers a new type of challenge, one to which the church is still struggling to find a way to respond. The former Soviet empire was easier to paint as an enemy, with its armies spread across Eastern Europe, repressive political system and atheist ideology. Islam's rise is more difficult to counter because it is a religious faith with many things in common with Christianity, including shared roots that both religions, along with Judaism, trace back to the prophet Abraham in the ancient Middle East.

That makes the rivalry subtler, and more complex. Often, religious differences get tangled up with other divisions, like ethnicity. In Nigeria, which has one of the fastest-growing Catholic populations in the world, Christian communities in parts of the country are forced to live under the strict Islamic code of sharia law. Violent clashes between Christians and Muslims, often sparked by deep-seated ethnic tensions, are frequent.

Meanwhile, Islam has grown rapidly, replacing Catholicism as the world's biggest faith. Islam has seen particular success in areas like Africa and Asia that were once considered the future cradle of Catholicism. In 1970, there were 20% more Catholics in the world than Muslims, according to the World Christian Encyclopedia. But since then, Islam has expanded at nearly double the rate of Catholicism. By 2000, the number of Muslims world-wide had surpassed Catholics, swelling to nearly 1.2 billion, compared with 1.06 billion Catholics, the World Christian Encyclopedia says.

At the same time, many Catholics see the church's conciliatory gestures as being increasingly one-sided. The lot of Christian communities in the Muslim world appears to have grown tougher, not easier. The largest mosque in Europe opened 10 years ago just a mile from the Vatican. But in Saudi Arabia, a million Catholic guest workers, many from the Philippines, still can't attend church services because the kingdom doesn't allow any religion but Islam. In some parts of the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, some Catholic communities are in danger of vanishing altogether. In Syria, for instance, priests say Mass in nearly empty churches as Catholic communities that thrived for centuries have fled regional violence and a resurgent Islam.

Drifting Away

Perhaps nowhere is the challenge greater than in the church's traditional heartland of Western Europe, now home to as many as 15 million Muslims. The Vatican has seen a slow decline in Europe as part of a century-long drift away from Christianity by white Europeans. But Islam has been increasing its followers, mainly among immigrant populations from the Middle East and Africa. In France, Muslims currently number around 5.5 million, a figure that could double over the next 20 years. Meanwhile, some estimates say the percentage of French Catholics attending Mass on a regular basis has fallen into the single digits.


In the diocese of Seine Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, Father Jacques Gueddi feels he has been losing ground to Islam in an area that was once considered a bastion of Catholicism. The area's population has swelled over the past 30 years as immigrants moved in. Father Gueddi, himself the son of Muslim Moroccan immigrants, converted to Catholicism when he was 24 and became a priest at 39. Now 72, he spends much of his time traversing the rows of drab, cinderblock apartment buildings to counsel youths from Catholic families who might be flirting with converting to Islam.

Rome's approach of reaching out to Islam "might be good in theory," he says, but falls short in practice. "The church doesn't want to throw oil on the fire, but it needs to be more combative, more militant and organized." Catholic priests, he says, have been poorly prepared to confront Islam's growing influence. "Muslims are missionaries, while we lost our missionary spirit," he says.

On the other side of Paris, in the suburb of Evry, Khalil Merroun presides over a mosque that is now one of the best attended in France. "The advice I give my Catholic colleagues is to insist on asking themselves why their faithful don't live their spirituality," he says. The steady expansion of Islam in places like Evry, he adds, means that "the Catholic Church should not feel Europe belongs to it." He says that he converted 80 people at his mosque last year, most of them former Christians.

Islam's expansion in Catholicism's own backyard is prompting renewed reflection and worry about how Rome should respond. In a possible sign of discontent within the church with the olive-branch approach, the Vatican last year issued a document warning Christian women about the "bitter experience" that could arise when marrying Muslim men.

Finding ways to appear friendly to Islam while countering its gains and re-energizing the church will be one of the first issues the next pope must confront, and one of the thorniest. Within the church hierarchy, no clear consensus exists. "We're at a crossroads," says Andrea Riccardi, the founder of an influential, left-leaning Catholic group, the community of Sant'Egidio, in Rome.

Before this death earlier this month, Pope John Paul II made numerous efforts to reach out to other faiths, especially Islam. He visited many majority Muslim countries, such as Azerbaijan and Egypt, and was the first pope to ever set foot in a mosque, during a 2001 visit to the Syrian capital of Damascus. He approached many Muslim leaders as well, and even held a feisty exchange of letters with the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

This earned him respect across the Muslim world, where some have welcomed the church's call for dialogue. Ahmet al-Rawi, head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, an umbrella group based in Marksfield, England, that represents conservative Muslim groups, says he has visited the Vatican many times to meet with church officials. He said there are dozens of areas of agreement between the two faiths, such as the family, peace, justice and many moral issues.

"I wouldn't say that we could be allies, but we do have some common points of view," Mr. Rawi says.

But such dialogue hasn't succeed in turning the tide against the Muslim world. That has left many in the church wondering whether to adopt some sort of tougher approach to Islam. "The real question is, what kind of dialogue? Dialogue at all costs? Has it brought results?" asks Father Andrea Pacini, a professor specializing in the Islamic world at the Edoardo Agnelli Center for the Study of Comparative Religions in Turin, Italy. Some influential Catholics hope the next pope will make the church's conciliatory gestures toward Islam conditional on Christians receiving greater freedoms in the Muslim world.

The Vatican's current policy started with high hopes. In 1965, the church drafted a document called "Nostra Aetate," or "Our Age," which set a new policy of openness to the rest of the world. The Vatican created the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, an office to reach out to Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and other religions.

Red Faces

The openness initiative got off to a bumpy start. In 1976, several senior Vatican officials traveled to Libya for one of the first official dialogues with Muslims. The conference ended with the Vatican officials signing a lengthy document that they didn't have sufficient time to review, which, among other things, contained a harsh repudiation of Zionism. When the officials returned to Rome, a red-faced Vatican was forced to distance itself from the entire affair.

Since then, the council has fared better, though its initiatives have never gone very far. It has established relationships with organizations such as Al-Azhar University in Cairo. Its most recent session with Al-Azhar, in February, concluded with a request from the Muslim side that the Vatican issue an official apology for the Crusades, Christian invasions of the Middle East more than 800 years ago that still stir strong emotions among Muslims. The Vatican agreed to appoint a joint panel of experts to study the Crusades.

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The Vatican's outreach office is currently run by a 67-year-old English archbishop named Michael Fitzgerald, who studied at a Christian seminary in Tunisia that was later closed by the Tunisian government. Monsignor Fitzgerald, who works out of a drafty office a few meters from St. Peter's square, has so far resisted calls for a tougher approach.

"A strict understanding of reciprocity as tit-for-tat cannot be the attitude of the church," he says. "You can't impose the Christian message on anyone. And if they are not interested in the message, does that mean you stop dialoguing with them? No."

The church's attitude wasn't always so conciliatory. In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the first Crusade with a call to Christians to deliver Jerusalem from Muslim domination. Successive Crusades followed for the next two centuries, as armies waged war in the name of Christ for control of the Holy Land.

Granada, too, was the scene of violent rivalry. In 711, Moorish troops, who were Muslims from North Africa, swept north across a Spain that was divided into tiny kingdoms. Spanish kings spent the next eight centuries pushing the Muslims out, unifying Spain as they advanced. Finally, in 1492, Spanish troops surrounded Granada, ending the Moorish occupation.

Since then, Granada has carried a stigma in the Muslim world as a rare setback for a faith that has expanded for most of its history. This made construction of Granada's new Grand Mosque so poignant for some in the city's growing Muslim population, now estimated to number 15,000 in a city of 250,000. "The powers that be didn't want the mosque built because Granada was a symbol of the reconquest" of Spain by Christians, says Abdelkarim Carrasco, head of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities.

The city of Granada still celebrates the holiday of La Toma, or The Taking, which commemorates the Christian victory five centuries ago. Father Jose Luis Nogales Sanchez, a professor at the Catholic University of Granada, says Catholics are split in their reaction to the mosque.

One group, he says, "sees Islam as a challenge and even as a threat." Another sees Muslim immigration in Spain as inevitable and motivated by a search for economic opportunity, not religious conquest. "Between the two sides, there is a big gap," Father Sanchez says. "One side is arguably too hysterical, too alarmist, and the other could be said to be too naive."

---- Ian Johnson in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Gabriel Kahn at gabriel.kahn@wsj.com, Keith Johnson at keith.johnson@wsj.com and Andrés Cala at andres.cala@wsj.com

Hero Who Fought Crusaders Is Role Model for Muslims
For many Syrian Muslims, the Crusades still rankle. But the 12th-century leader Saladin may inspire today's peacemakers.

By Rhonda Roumani

On a dark street in a wealthy district of Damascus, a light shines from an arched, brass doorway. The door is slightly ajar. Inside, except for a small computer in the corner, the room seems like a medieval study. Ottoman-engraved silver plates, carved wood couches, and stained glass windows line the sides of this narrow office. Here, University of Damascus professor Suhair Zakkar is translating old manuscripts for a 90-volume series on the Crusades--an accumulation of his life's work.

To Zakkar, these texts are not exactly ancient history. "We feel the campaigns never ceased," says Zakkar, who speaks with the precision of a historian. "Europe invaded our country, and we fought the Europeans here and at last succeeded in liberating our country."

In Syria, the memory of the Crusades runs deep. It is here that Muslims fought an onslaught of crusaders all along the coastline from Damascus to Aleppo. For Arabs and Muslims, the Crusades marked a time of assault and destruction—a time when the Muslim world was in dire jeopardy, defending against bloodthirsty crusaders bent on destroying their land and their people simply because they were not Christian—or because they were Muslim.

“For two centuries, the crusaders killed several million Muslims,” explains Zakkar. “They left in this country a very bad memory of killing, destruction, spoiling and devastation. More than that, they came to this country to ‘rescue’ or help the local Christians. Before the coming of the Christians, in every part of Syria, there was a considerable number of Christians. But because of the Crusades, [Christianity] became a smaller religion in Syria and the Christians became a real minority.”

Like Zakkar, many Muslims in the region believe that the current political situation in the Arab world--which began when the French and the British attempted to divide the region and helped establish the state of Israel after the second world war--is nothing more than another wave of the Crusades.

"The Crusades have continued until today," Zakkar says. "In 1291 we had the Crusades against Egypt by Cyprus and then several Crusades against North Africa. The Ottoman Empire faced several Crusades. Then we have the French and the British mandate. Then up to today. When President Bush wanted to take his forces to Iraq, he used the word Crusades several times--and up to this moment, he believes himself to be the new messiah."

Because past hurts of the Crusades are felt afresh, the Muslim heroes of earlier campaigns are powerful symbols in the Arab world. Nureddin, the son of a Turkish tribal leader, united all of Syria in the 12th century and defeated the crusaders in Egypt. His successor, Saladin al-Ayyubi, symbolizes resistance and pride in defending against Christian crusaders. The leader of Egypt, Saladin wrested Muslim land from the crusaders and gained his place in history in the Battle of Hattin in 1187, when he liberated Jerusalem with little bloodshed. This battle is the climax of the new Ridley Scott movie "Kingdom of Heaven."

Saladin died in Damascus in 1193, but his spirit lives on in this and other cities. Just outside the old city walls, which were once expanded and strengthened by Saladin, his statue stands as a present-day protector. Inside the walls in a red-domed building just behind the famous Umayyid Mosque, his mausoleum lies between columns that were once part of the Roman Temple of Jupiter.

Other than "Kingdom of Heaven," few recent Hollywood films have tackled the Crusades. But in the Middle East, screen portrayals of Saladin are plentiful. Over the last decade, documentaries and television series on the Crusades and the life of Saladin have multiplied, presenting to the Arab world an honorable history in which Muslims were united, strong, and able to defend themselves against Western aggression. Muslims here view Saladin as both astute and chivalrous—a general who earned the respect not only of his own people, but also of his enemy with whom he sought peaceful coexistence. Saladin continues to represent the savior who brought hope and dignity to a Muslim world in a time of pain and darkness.

In “Kingdom of Heaven,” Saladin is played by Ghassan Massoud, a respected Syrian actor. A slight man with strong Arab features--a furrowed brow and brown, expressive eyes--Massoud portrays Saladin as a stately, chivalrous man who knew how to deal with his enemy. In a Beliefnet interview, he said he believes Saladin would have been able to bring understanding and dialogue between the Muslim world and the West, were he alive today.

“It is in my nature to understand Saladin more than [Westerners can],” Massoud says over coffee. “My religion is the same religion as his. We have the same geography, the same history. He was a huge hero. He enabled Arabs, Muslims, and the Christians to return to Jerusalem. ...He conveyed a good image to the West of a noble enemy.”

Muslims today have no counterpart to Saladin, Zakkar says. He hopes Saladin’s model of coexistence will provide a prototype for a new generation of Muslims who could bring about a peaceful solution to the dispute over Jerusalem.

“If we are looking for a new champion, we want him to liberate our land and not to kill anybody,” he says. “We do not like to do it the way the Americans do. We want to liberate Jerusalem and Palestinian land, but we do not want to kill the Jews. We are looking for a new generation and a new generation will create new leadership—a Muslim one, not an American one or a Russian one.”

For now, Zakkar says that the key to defusing the current clash of civilizations may be found in the past.

“Saladin liberated Jerusalem and dealt [fairly] with the crusaders, with his enemy, as a good Muslim because Islam is a tolerant religion,” says Zakkar. “He won respect here and in the West. Nowadays, because of the struggle between Islam and the West—the struggle between civilizations—and the movement to unite Europe and [the attempt to unite] the West under the leadership of the U.S. by will or by force—and because of the occupation of Israel, many people here and there are writing about Saladin. Probably not to know what happened in the past, but to predict what will happen in the future."

The following is an interview with a person who has been involved intensively in Christianity related activities. It covers a range of issues that face all religions viz, nature of God, nature of scripture, pluralism of faiths, tradition versus modernity, issues of poverty and terrorism etc. There are interesting parallels with our own tradition and institutional thinking.

'I Am a Mystic'
'I never doubt,' says Bishop Spong. 'It's not that I'm getting older and cramming for finals. It's that God becomes more real.'

Interview by Deborah Caldwell



John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark, N.J., for 20 years before his retirement in 2000. Widely admired (and often scorned), Spong is a leader of the worldwide liberal Christianity movement. He has taught at Harvard, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., and has lectured in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. He is the author of 15 books, including his latest, The Sins of Scripture.

Beliefnet senior editor Deborah Caldwell interviewed him at his New Jersey home, which features a wooden troll-like bishop, hand-carved in Africa, serving as a comic sentry by the front door. International art hung all over the sunny house, artifacts of Spong's travels abroad. He's still as opinionated as ever--but he seems mellower and downright happier. After all, he points out, he's hitting the stride of an older, wiser man: he’ll be 74 on June 16. The conversation follows.

What is the worst verse in the Bible?

The one that has hurt the most people is a verse in Matthew when the Jewish crowd is made to say, "His blood be upon us and upon our children." Because that echoed and got quoted over and over and over through the centuries and justified anti-Semitism.

The background is important: the Jewish world had gotten more and more radical under the occupation of the Romans. And those that accommodated themselves throughout the occupation were looked at as traitors; those who fought the occupation were considered terrorists to the Romans, but freedom fighters to the Jews. By 66 C.E. this movement broke out into a full-scale war, the Galilean war. The Galilean guerillas fought well as long as they were in the hills of Galilee because they could do hit-and-run stuff. The Romans finally decided that they couldn't tolerate that so they matched their forces against Jerusalem and destroyed it in 70 C.E. What happened then was that you had incredible anti-Semitic feelings among the Romans. It would be like American feeling toward Osama bin Laden and the terrorists...in that they suffered at their hands. The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.

And because nobody wanted to be identified with the crowd that brought Jewish destruction. If you put it in modern context-suppose Osama bin Laden destroys the World Trade Center and that creates enormous hostility, but lets assume for a minute that Osama bin Laden managed to conquer America. In order to survive, people would try to accommodate by saying, "We weren't the ones who hated the Muslims."

What's the best verse in the Bible?

The text with which I close most of my lectures is from John 10. They are words attributed to Jesus that members of the Jesus Seminar don't think he ever spoke. I don't mind accepting that. But to me, they are so true to who he is. And that's the phrase, "I've come that they might have life and have it abundantly."

The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. My basis of morality is this: does this action enhance life, or does it denigrate life? Does it build up or does it tear down? And if that's your basis, then you can't possibly be a sexist because sexism diminishes women. You can't possibly be homophobic because it diminishes homosexuals. You can't possibly be a racist because you can't tell people they are lesser because their skin is black. Or any of the other things that have discriminated against people.

What is the basis for your faith?

I have to start at the basics, and that's God. And the thing that I think you have to say about God first is that nobody knows who God is, nobody knows what God is. I don't care what they say--all any human being knows is how they believe they have experienced God. They do not know what God is.

That would be like a horse saying they know what a human being is. A horse knows how a horse experiences a human being. And even when you say, this is my "God experience," there is always the possibility that you're deluded. And a lot of deluded people think that they have had "God experiences" and hear voices. So I start with that--I can't tell you who God is or what God is; I can only share what I believe my God experience is.

My primary theological teacher was Paul Tillich. Tillich defines God not in terms of a being, a supernatural power who lives somewhere outside the world, but as what he calls "the ground of being." If God is the "ground of being" then I worship God by having the courage to be. And if I am faithful in following that God, I try to build a world where other people have the freedom to be who they are. Anything that enhances being would be good, and anything that violates being would be bad.

My second definition of God, or of my God experience, is that God is the source of life. And if God is the source of life, the only way I can worship God is by living fully. And I've got to dedicate myself as a follower of this God to building a world where everybody has an opportunity to live fully. And again, you get to the same place. Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.

And my third definition of my God experience is that I see God as the source of love. I think love is a transcendent power that I can receive but I can't generate. It can flow through me but I can't say, "OK, I'll now decide to be loving." I can only give away the love that I have received.

That's interesting.

So in some sense, the very existence of love means that we participate in transcendence. And if God is the source of love, the only way I can worship God is by loving wastefully. Not setting barriers and counting costs and that sort of thing. Not saying, "Do you deserve it or not?" But loving wastefully. Therefore to be a follower of this God means you have to try to enhance the love that's available in this world.

I start with that God definition and then I say, “OK, what about Jesus?” The claim historically is that somehow through Jesus, God has been experienced. Then you get to the theology that says he came out of heaven and had a virgin birth and went back to heaven--but that's the mythological framework that tries to make sense of whatever the experience was.

I can only look at him through the gospels, through the way the tradition has presented him. It seems to me that he is so fully alive that I can see the source of life in him. It seems to me he is so totally loving that no matter what they do to him, he responds by loving. They drive nails in him and he is portrayed as saying, "Father, forgive him for they do not know what they do." The portrait of Jesus is one whose love is totally giving, no matter what you do to him--betray him, deny him, forsake him, persecute him, crucify him--he responds by loving.

So it doesn't matter whether any of that or all of it happened specifically, it's that people experienced him that way. There had to have been an experience that people have tried to make sense out of.

I have no difficulty asserting the traditional Christian claim that somehow God was in this Christ. I don't know that Jesus is different from Debbie or Jack, except in degree. I think he's so fully human, that he can be a channel through which people can experience this transcendent God presence. That's a very different way of approaching the Christian story, but it's one that I think is the future, because the old mythology doesn't work.

In what way doesn't it work?

Take the virgin birth tradition, which is how we explained how God got from outside to inside Mary. The story hasn’t worked since 1724, when we discovered that women have an egg cell. So Jesus is half God and half human--not fully God and fully human--which is what the early church leaders were trying to say. And if God is really a biological father, then Jesus can't be human—he's got to be something different.

At the other end of the story, there is the issue of getting Jesus back up to God, which comes into the Christian tradition in the 9th decade, maybe the 10th decade, in the ascension story. It doesn't make sense in the space age. Carl Sagen once said that if Jesus literally ascended into the sky and traveled at the speed of light, then he hadn't yet escaped our galaxy.

I spend my time, not rejecting the way the Christian story has been understood, but rejecting the literalism that has been imposed upon it. My secular humanist friends would reject the whole story. My fundamentalists friends will say it's got to be literally so. I'm in a strange position, where I've got to separate the experience from the explanation. I keep wanting to find a way to make the experience understandable for the 21st century.

Why are you Christian? Why not be Buddhist or Jewish?

The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go. If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths. But the path I walk is the Christ path. If God is God and if the Christ path leads me to God, then I will meet whomever has gone through whatever path they've come from.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake. But if you go back and look at the Jesus story, there are three texts in Mark, Matthew and Luke. They all came from the same source, but Matthew changes a word which makes it really crucial. Mark has Jesus say, "If you're not against me, you're for me." Luke has Jesus say, "If you're not against me, you're for me." Matthew changes that and says, "If you're not for me, you're against me." And that's the one that Christians have used over the centuries, but it's two to one against Matthew being authentic.

Now who can argue that the Buddhists are against the Christians? You could argue that they're not for the Christians, but you couldn't argue that they're against them, or the Jews or the Muslims. All of those are paths that humans have walked toward God. And they're not enemies, they're just different paths. But Matthew has turned that in such a way that you're either on my side or you're my enemy.

Is that because Matthew was Jewish and was writing to a Jewish audience?

I think there's a lot of truth in there. And by the time you get to the fourth gospel (John), all the "I am" sayings come into the tradition. For Jews, God's name was "I am." The orthodox Jewish party excommunicated the Jewish revisionists (the early Christians); the orthodox said "You no longer have any part of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses," and the revisionists (the new Christians) responded by saying, "Yes, we do, because the God we meet in Jesus is the 'I am' of Moses and the burning bush."

And so every time they could, they make Jesus say, "I am," "I am," "I am," "I am." One of them is "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me." And that's the text that turns Christianity into being demonic--in the sense that we have the truth, and the rest of you have to come to God the way we have come to God. And we are justified in forcing you to come to God this way. And that's where you get religious wars.

People don't realize religion is never a search for truth. Religion is a search for security. Now, we have theological enterprises that try to shape truth. But the bedrock of our religion is a search for security. And that comes out of the very dawning of self-consciousness. I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. Mother Nature is not sweet.

And so what this person did was to say, "I can't survive in this world, so I'll create a being more powerful than I am, and I'll relate to that being and that being will help me survive." So we started out by naming every tree and rock and shrub and bush and river and ocean...it had a spirit. And we worked out a way of accommodating that spirit. That's where religion starts--in a search for security in a radically insecure world.

Is religion man-made?

Yes. Religion is man-made, but God is not. Our ideas of God are man-made. The moment we explain it, the moment we say, “This is how I experience God” then you’ve captured God in the mindset of your time and history, your level of knowledge, your language, your prejudices, everything. So we didn’t understand about germs, we thought if you got sick God was punishing you. That made perfect sense. Then we discovered germs and then we developed antibiotics to deal with germs. And then we discovered that it didn’t make any difference if you were Adolf Hitler or Mother Teresa--penicillin works. It has nothing to do with your behavior.

I don’t know how to say that God is real anymore than say it. All I can say is that I am consumed with that reality. If I had to name what I really am, and this would really surprise my critics and my friends, but I really am a mystic. I really live in an awareness of a transcendent power that I cannot articulate, cannot explain. And yet, I never doubt. And I walk into that mystery more every day of my life. It’s not just that I’m getting older and cramming for finals. It’s that it becomes more and more real. And the closer you get into that experience, the less any words describing it make any sense. And so you’re finally reduced to silence, awe and wonder.

It sounds like you experience God on a molecular level--almost a Taoist approach.

Yes, Fritjof Capra (author of The Tao of Physics) used to be one of the authors I read most. I think all those paths are quite valid. And I think one of the great tragedies of religion is that we’ve made each path exclusive. It’s ludicrous.

Pope John Paul II made steps toward Muslims and made steps toward Jews. But that’s about 500 years too late in my opinion. I welcome it, but it’s irrelevant . If you don’t learn to get along, human beings aren’t going to survive.

And, ironically, that’s the great thing that terrorism does for us. Terrorism is a whole new enemy. An all-out arsenal didn’t save the World Trade Center. If they want to blow up the Holland Tunnel or the Lincoln Tunnel--you know, I could do that this afternoon if I wanted to--I could just load my car up with dynamite because nobody checks my car when I go through the tunnel. So we’re constantly vulnerable to terrorists. And you learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don’t have any freedom left, or you’re going to build a world that doesn’t create terrorists—and that means a whole different way of “getting along.”

I hear a lot of people say they are fearful that if we don’t get along then the world ends, because of terrorism. You seem to be saying the same thing, but the flipside. You’re actually optimistic?

Yeah. I think I am. Because what terrorism finally winds up saying to us is that you can’t live in a world that bends some people so totally out of shape that they want to destroy themselves and anybody who gets in their way. Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they’re willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies.

You go back and read the Crusades history. The seeds of terrorism are being sowed as we butcher them and murder them in the name of the God of the West, and denigrated them and spat on them. You think that stuff doesn’t come back to haunt you? It may be a thousand years, but it’s still there. You don’t diminish human life the way we have diminished human life with our power and not expect it at some point to rise up. They’re not going to rise up with an army to come defeat our army. They’re going to get at us the way they can get at us.

So why be optimistic?

Because someday we will realize that. Go back to the civil rights movement for a moment. By the mid-1960s people were rioting in the streets, and the first response was, “Let’s suppress them. Let’s move in the National Guard and let’s stop these rioters, let’s put these people in jail.” Then somebody said, “There aren’t enough policemen in the world to keep 20 percent of the population under control if they don’t want to be under control. So maybe we’d better address the causes of the riots instead of just trying to suppress the riots.”

And that’s when you say, the problem is jobs, the problem is school, the problem is after-care programs, the problem is poverty. And you begin to develop programs that address the causes. And then people that were once the rioters run for president, like Jesse Jackson.

That’s what’s got to happen in the world-level. You can’t have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability. Helplessness always manifests itself as terror. Because who gives a damn? I mean, what does it matter that I die? I’d rather be dead than alive. And if you could kill a few people who have ruined your life in the process….

But if you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterday’s terrorists become tomorrow’s elected officials and they’re part of the system.

I don’t believe my country will go the way of the righteous right, because I think my country is stronger than that. But it takes a long time. The way we stopped prejudice in the south was that prejudice got more expensive than non-prejudice because riots were going on, you couldn’t trust anybody, you had to secure your home, you had to have a shotgun to save yourself. After a while that becomes very destructive to your own psycheSo then you begin to say, “What do we do to end this?”

Where’s God in this process?

I see God not as a being up in the sky, but as the source of life, the source of love and the ground of being. So I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. I experience God as a life force that flows through the universe. I’m going to worship God I need to get on the side of the life force and enhance it instead of being opposed to it.

And that means you’re going to live in a very different world. It’s not a bad world. It means that those of us who have more of this world’s goods are going to not have as much, because there’s only a finite amount of this world’s goods to go around. I always want to be on the side of the increasing life of the most people.

What do your audiences think of you these days?

When I go to the red states I’m considered a radical Christian, and when I go to the blue states I’m considered an old-fashioned religious man who is trying to call people back to something. I go where I’m invited. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I’d be away every day of my life.

For those interested...

The 20/20 special "Resurrection" airs on ABC on Friday, May 20, at 10 pm ET/9 pm Central.

http://www.beliefnet.com/resurrection.html

The following is an essay on the state of Gnosticism in Christianity today. Gnosticism is the essence of all esoteric traditions including Ismailism. This essay provides the background of Gnosticism in Christianity and the tensions with the orthodox fundamentalist approach through its history not unlike the Islamic history. Today it is gaining support and perhaps may play an important role in the revival of the essential message of Christ.

Gnosticism Today

After looking in some detail at "original" Gnosticism and the Gnostic Gospels over the last few weeks, it is fair to ask: are there followers of Gnosticism today? If so, what are their views?

The Gnostic Church did not entirely die out, even after the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. when, at least figuratively, Gnosticism and its then-famous champion, Arius, were thrown out in favor of orthodoxy. For some 18 centuries, the movement was in eclipse in the West, known mainly to scholars and small religious groups, its heresies continually to be guarded against.

The Gnostic Church has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, however, thanks to a combination of the ideas of the early 20th-century psychiatrist Carl Jung, the popularized writings of a new generation of scholars who have brought the early documents to light (see Elaine Pagels and James Robinson whose experiences with the Nag Hammadi finds we have learned about over the last several weeks), and the New Age spiritual movement, which provides echoes of Gnosticism in its emphasis on "salvation through inner knowledge," and the need for a "change of consciousness." Certainly the popularity of The Da Vinci Code has given millions of readers an exposure to this religious current they might not otherwise have had.

One of the leading proponents of the Gnostic faith today is Lance S. Owens, who is both a physician in clinical practice and an ordained priest. He also maintains the Website www.gnosis.org. In this essay he describes the early history of Gnosticism and then asks the rhetorical question: why were the Gnostics considered such a threat to the orthodoxy?

Early Christianity Did Not Mean Simply Following Jesus.
By Lance S. Owens
Copyright © Lance Owens 2004. Adapted from an essay on www.gnosis.org and used with permission of the author.

In the first century of the Christian era the term 'Gnostic' came to denote a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart, so they asserted. Stephan Hoeller explains that these Christians held a "conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life."

What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly reviewed below, but first a historical overview of the early Church might be useful. In the initial century and a half of Christianity—the period when we find first mention of "Gnostic" Christians—no single acceptable format of Christian thought had yet been defined. During this formative period Gnosticism was one of many currents moving within the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at this early moment. Gnosticism was one of the seminal influences shaping that destiny.

That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by the fact that one of its most influential teachers, Valentinus, may have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of Rome. Born in Alexandria around 100 C.E., Valentinus distinguished himself at an early age as an extraordinary teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In mid-life he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's evolving capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public affairs of the Church. A prime characteristic of Gnostics was their claim to be keepers of sacred traditions, gospels, rituals, and successions ñ esoteric matters for which many Christians were either not properly prepared or simply not inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic predilection, apparently professed to have received a special apostolic sanction through Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the Apostle Paul, and to be a custodian of doctrines and rituals neglected by what would become Christian orthodoxy. Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid-second century, by the end of his life Valentinus had been forced from the public eye and branded a heretic by the developing orthodoxy Church.

While the historical and theological details are far too complex for proper explication here, the tide of history can be said to have turned against Gnosticism in the middle of the second century. No Gnostic after Valentinus would ever come so near prominence in the greater Church. Gnosticism's emphasis on personal experience, its continuing revelations and production of new scripture, its asceticism and paradoxically contrasting libertine postures, were all met with increasing suspicion. By 180 C.E. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, was publishing his first attacks on Gnosticism as heresy, a labor that would be continued with increasing vehemence by the church Fathers throughout the next century.
Orthodox Christianity was deeply and profoundly influenced by its struggles with Gnosticism in the second and third centuries. Formulations of many central traditions in Christian theology came as reflections and shadows of this confrontation with the Gnosis. But by the end of the fourth century the struggle was essentially over: the evolving ecclesia had added the force of political correctness to dogmatic denunciation, and with this sword so-called "heresy" was painfully cut from the Christian body. Gnosticism as a Christian tradition was largely eradicated, its remaining teachers ostracized, and its sacred books destroyed. All that remained for students seeking to understand Gnosticism in later centuries were the denunciations and fragments preserved in the heresiologies. Or at least so it seemed until the mid-twentieth century.

Gnostics as a Threat?

What made Gnostics such dangerous heretics? The complexities of Gnosticism are legion, making any generalizations wisely suspect. While several systems for defining and categorizing Gnosticism have been proposed over the years, none has universal acceptance. Nevertheless, four elements are generally agreed upon as general characteristics of Gnostic thought.

The first essential characteristic is: Gnosticism asserts that "direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings," and the attainment of such knowledge is the supreme achievement of human life. Gnosis is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience. The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational theology—a fact that makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals with "bookkeeper mentalities." One simply cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic dogmatic affirmations. The Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation—Gnosis was the creative experience of revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static creed. . . .

In his study, The American Religion, noted literary critic Harold Bloom suggests a second characteristic of Gnosticism that might help us conceptually circumscribe its mysterious heart. Gnosticism, says Bloom, "is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the self, and [this] knowledge leads to freedom...." Primary among all the revelatory perceptions a Gnostic might reach was the profound awakening that came with knowledge that something within him was uncreated. The Gnostics called this "uncreated self" the divine seed, the pearl, the spark of knowing: consciousness, intelligence, light. And this seed of intellect was the self-same substance of God. It was man's authentic reality, the glory of humankind and divinity alike. . . . By all rational perception, man clearly was not God, and yet in essential truth, was Godly. This conundrum was a Gnostic mystery, and its knowing was their treasure. . . .

This brings us to the third prominent element in our brief summary of Gnosticism: its reverence for texts and scriptures unaccepted by the orthodox fold. Gnostic experience was mythopoetic: in story and metaphor, and perhaps also in ritual enactments, Gnosticism sought expression of subtle, visionary insights inexpressible by rational proposition or dogmatic affirmation. For the Gnostics, revelation was the nature of Gnosis. Irritated by their profusion of "inspired texts" and myths, Ireneaus complains in his classic second century refutation of Gnosticism, that, "Every one of them generates something new, day by day, according to his ability; for no one is deemed perfect, who does not develop...some mighty fiction."

The fourth characteristic . . . is the most difficult of the four to succinctly untangle, and also one of the most disturbing to subsequent orthodox theology. This is the image of God as a dyad, or duality. While affirming the ultimate unity and integrity of the Divine, Gnosticism noted in its experiential encounter with the numinous, contrasting manifestations and qualities. In many of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts God is imaged as a dyad of masculine and feminine elements. . . . . Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostics honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostics, had prefigured this mystic relationship: His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. . . .

Christ came to rectify the separation...and join the two components; and to give life unto those who had died by separation and join them together. . . . We are left with our poetic imaginations to consider what this might mean. Though Orthodox polemicists frequently accused Gnostics of unorthodox sexual behavior, exactly how these ideas and images played out in human affairs remains historically uncertain. . . .

A well respected Christian Bishop John Shelby Spong challenges the notion that the Bible is the word of God in the following essay.

The Word of God?

"This is the word of the Lord"

That is the liturgical phrase used in Christian churches to mark the end of a reading from the Bible. It is a strange, even a misleading, phrase. Yet Sunday after Sunday it is repeated, reinforcing in the psyches of worshipers a rather outdated attitude toward Holy Scripture.

In many of its details, the Bible is simply wrong! Epilepsy is not caused by demon possession. David did not write the Psalms. The earth is not the center of the universe. On other issues of great public concern, the Bible is no longer even regarded as moral. Its verses have been used to affirm war, slavery, segregation and apartheid. It defines women as inferior creatures and suggests that homosexual persons be put to death.

Church people try to ignore or suppress these biblical deficiencies, but when the Scriptures are read to a listening congregation the response is increasing incredulity. Still they respond, "This is the word of the Lord."

Outside the church, this presumed authority of Scripture is generally ignored. Secular people live in a post-religious world where the idea that a literary work, written between 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E., can be "the Word of God," is simply too far-fetched to believe. This obvious ecclesiastical power play is no longer even passively accepted as benign. One has only to chart the evil and pain that many people have endured in history because someone regarded the Bible as the "Word of God." That claim is no longer regarded as valid.

In a series of essays that will appear periodically over the next few months in this column I will examine some of the more frightening examples of these tragedies. My purpose will be quite specific. I will be seeking to call the Christian Church in all of its forms to look closely at what it is, overtly and covertly, teaching its people about the Bible and at the enormous gap that exists between what biblical scholars know and what the leaders of the churches actually say to their congregations. If our clergy do not really believe what they are saying, and if our liturgies affirm things that the scholars universally reject, then something is clearly amiss in contemporary Christianity that does not augur well for a Christian future.

First, we need to state some basic biblical facts.

The people who wrote the books in the Bible did not think they were writing "The Word of God." That is a quite elementary but singularly important place to begin.

In regard to the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah or the Books of Moses, scholars have known since the 19th century, that they are not the work of a single hand. They are rather a compilation of at least four strands of Jewish writing that were composed over a period of some 500 years. Those strands were first, the Yahwist document, written in the tenth century B.C.E. and sometimes called the Hebrew Iliad, which reflects the national history of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The second was the Elohist document, written in the 9th century B.C.E. and sometimes called the Hebrew Odyssey, which reflects the national history of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the Assyrians in 721 B.C.E., these two national stories were woven together into a single narrative. The third document was the product of one known as the Deuteronomic writer, composed in the late 7th century B.C.E., and consisting of the book of Deuteronomy and a general editing of the newly merged national Jewish story. The fourth source of the Torah was not so much a document as it was an expansive editorial commentary applied to the entire faith story by those called the Priestly Writers and written during the Babylonian Exile somewhere between 586 and 450 B.C.E. That is the process, briefly described, that produced the oldest part of the biblical story.

One can identify the places where these versions of the story were woven rather inexactly together, producing many of the conflicting details in the Torah itself. The Sabbath day law, for example, developed during the Exile, is read back into the manna in the wilderness story to make sure that the miraculous food was not gathered on the seventh day in violation of the Sabbath. The ritualistic laws governing sacrifices were used to alter the Noah story so that during the 150 days on the ark, Noah could offer the proper sacrifices without destroying that species.

Finally, there are three versions of the Ten Commandments in the Torah. The oldest one, from the Yahwist document, is found in Exodus 34. The version with which most of us are familiar, found in Exodus 20, comes from the Elohist document but was significantly doctored by the Priestly Writers. The third version is in Deuteronomy 5 and though close to Exodus 20 has some revealing differences. The Deuteronomic version of the 4th Commandment makes the reason for rest on the Sabbath, not that God rested from the work of creation and thus hallowed that day, but that the Jews should remember that they were once slaves and that even slaves need a day of rest. The seven-day creation story, with which the Bible now opens, was written by the Priestly Writers well after the Deuteronomic document had been completed.

The idea that the Bible came into being in some sort of miraculous way and is either the literal dictation of God or even the "inspired message of God" is simply not supportable on its face. The Bible is a profoundly human, deeply flawed, tribal history that has created as much pain as blessing in our world.

Moving on to the Hebrew prophets, this analysis produces a similar difficulty. The prophets tended to explain every disaster that befell the chosen people as the direct result of their laxity in obeying God's laws or in their inability to worship God properly. God seemed to have little more to do than to organize the whole universe so as to teach the chosen people how to be faithful or to demonstrate the dreadful price that unfaithful ones would have to pay. When we turn to the first part of the New Testament to be written, we need to register the fact that Paul's letters were just that, letters. They are time bound and time specific. They express irritation at and praise for the behavior of the actual recipients. They were composed in a dialogical manner in order to address real issues bothering real people in real time. When Paul wrote in anger, "I hope those who bother you will mutilate themselves," was that the Word of God? Surely it was nothing more than the word of Paul!

Similarly, when Paul suggested that a woman's head must be covered in public worship, he was expressing a cultural norm not a universal principle. When Paul said, "I forbid a woman to have authority over a man" or when he suggested that those who do not worship God properly would have their sexual identities confused, does one really want to suggest that this badly dated bit of human ignorance is to be reverenced as the voice of God?

Later the Gospel writers would violently twist out of context the writings of the prophets to prove such things as the literal accuracy of the Virgin Birth or to demonstrate that the ancient prophets supported the doctrinal and creedal development of the 4th and 5th Centuries of the Common Era. Jerry Falwell, in a published book, has suggested that the divine nature of Jesus is "proved" by the fact that he fulfilled in a very specific way, the messianic expectations of the prophets. That attitude, however, has been revealed by modern biblical scholarship to be nothing less than profound ignorance. The idea that a God, living somewhere above the sky, would drop hints into the texts of writers, some 800 years before the birth of Christ, determining exactly what Jesus would do in the 1st century, is fanciful enough. But when one adds that God would need to guard these divine hints through the centuries when these texts were copied by hand, protect them from destruction in war and guide the minds of Jewish decision makers centuries later to include these prophetic works in the Jewish Canon of Scripture, the elements of miracle and magic become heightened to incredibly superstitious levels.

Next, one needs to understand, that contrary to the way Christian theology has interpreted the Gospels from the 2nd century on, Jesus did not miraculously live out these prophetic expectations. It was exactly the other way around. The story of Jesus was crafted some 40 - 70 years after that earthly life came to an end, to make it conform to the biblical expectations! Micah, for example, did not predict that the birth of Jesus would occur in Bethlehem. That was the way that later Christians interpreted Micah. Jesus' birth, which probably occurred in Galilee, was shifted to Bethlehem in order to make the birth of Jesus fulfill this expectation.

The story of Jesus' crucifixion was, likewise, deliberately and liturgically shaped by their authors who had Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 in front of them as they wrote the passion narrative. We forget, conveniently I would suggest, that the earliest Gospel, Mark, says that when Jesus was arrested, all of the disciples "forsook him and fled." Jesus died alone with no eyewitnesses. The Gospel writers later wrote the story of his death to "reveal the fulfillment of Scripture." A great part of the crisis in faith today derives from the fact that the authority once claimed for the Bible cannot and should not be sustained in the light of modern knowledge. How important then is this traditional view of the Bible to the future of Christianity. Can this view of Scripture be abandoned without Christianity, as we have known it, not also collapsing? That question remains to be answered but it will be the present in the background of many columns written during the coming year. Stay tuned!

In the following news article, the Pope is calling for a dialogue between Islam and Christianity in the wake of recent bombings in London. An interesting prospect ahead!

Pope Urges Muslims to Confront Terrorism


By IAN FISHER
Published: August 21, 2005

COLOGNE, Germany, Aug. 20 - Pope Benedict XVI used his first meeting with Muslims to deliver a blunt message on Saturday that Christianity and Islam had no choice but to work together to quell terrorism, which he said represented "the darkness of a new barbarism."



In a Europe awash in new antiterror laws and fear of new attacks after the bombings last month in London, the pope said an improvement in relations "cannot be reduced to an optional extra. It is, in fact, a vital necessity, on which a large measure of our future depends."

Benedict's words, to a group of 10 Muslims, most of them from an organization of Turks in Germany, were some of the strongest of his young pontificate, and seemed to elevate the issue of terrorism and relations with Islam to the top of his agenda.

His tone seemed several degrees tougher than that of his predecessor, John Paul II, who at 60 meetings with Muslims emphasized more their common ancestry in Abraham. Pope Benedict's tone was not contentious and he laid no blame. But he spoke with a more direct urgency.

He told the gathering here of the "great responsibility" Muslim teachers had to educate their youth, and though he did not say it, he seemed to be speaking of an education against hatred and violence. He also seemed to transmit a broader message on a delicate topic for the church: the rights of Christian minorities to practice their faith in predominantly Muslim countries.

"Respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization," he said in German.

While the pope has denounced terrorism in the past, his speech on Saturday was by far the most detailed, both in its description of the danger and his view that better communication between Christianity and Islam - religions which he acknowledged had an often violent past relationship - was the only answer.

"Terrorism of any kind is a perverse and cruel decision, which shows contempt for the sacred right to life and undermines the very foundation of all civil society," Benedict said, according to the transcript of his speech.

"If together we can succeed in eliminating from our hearts any trace of rancor, in resisting every form of intolerance and in opposing every manifestation of violence, we will turn back the wave of cruel fanaticism that endangers the lives of so many people."

The meeting was relatively brief, about a half an hour, and was held not in a mosque but at the Catholic seminary where Benedict is staying on his four-day trip here as the star attraction of a huge festival of young Catholics, World Youth Day. It is his first trip abroad as pope.

But the participants said they appreciated the invitation, and shared the pope's worries about terrorism. Germany is home to about 3.5 million Muslims, most of them Turkish, and many European Muslims worry that they are being eyed with increasing suspicion.

"Terrorism is not only a problem that comes up in countries where there are Christians," Ridvan Cakir, president of the Turkish Islamic Committee in Europe, said after the meeting, which unlike one between the pope and Jews in Cologne of Friday, was closed to reporters and television cameras. "It's a problem that we all share, he said. "We all have to be aware of that problem and fight against it."

Seyda Can, 27, one of three women who attended the meeting, said she believed that the pope's call for a stronger dialogue between Christians and Muslims could bear important results.

"When we have this dialogue, we will have trust and we won't be afraid," Ms. Can, also a member of the Turkish Islamic Committee, said after the meeting. "With the dialogue, terrorism will be finished."

In the meeting, Mr. Cakir delivered a brief address before the pope spoke, also focusing on the need for more exchanges between Christianity and Islam.

"If we can continue to coexist in dialogue, it will send a signal that the theory of a 'clash of cultures' is baseless," he said. "The more religious and cultural communities can learn about one another, the more they will realize that there is no reason for hostility."

Mr. Cakir also touched briefly on an issue that has been a point of contention among some Muslims and Benedict, saying, "The process of Turkey's accession to the European Union is also an important occasion, one that should be judged in this context."

Before being chosen as pope, the man who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in an interview last year that he opposed Turkey's inclusion to the European Union, saying that Turkey, as the seat of the Ottoman Empire, had always been "in permanent contrast to Europe."

Before becoming pope in April of this year, Cardinal Ratzinger was aligned to the wing of the church more skeptical toward Islam, seeing it in competition with Christianity in many places - Africa, Asia and, to some extent, in Europe - as church attendance dropped and the number of Muslim immigrants rose on the continent. As he did before becoming pope, Benedict has spoken often about the need for Europe to renew its sense of Christian roots.

As pope, however, he has made interreligious dialogue a cornerstone of his papacy and has been clear to say that he did not believe that terror attacks were specifically "anti-Christian," as a leaked early version of a Vatican press release condemning the bombings in London had stated.

At the same time, he appears to have retained some degree of skepticism. When asked by reporters last month if he believed Islam was a religion of peace, he said: "Certainly it has elements that favor peace, as it has other elements."

His meeting on Saturday seemed aimed at speaking to the elements favoring peace.

"I am certain that I echo your own thoughts when I bring up as one of our concerns the spread of terrorism," he said. "Terrorist activity is continually recurring in various parts of the world, sowing death and destruction and plunging many of our brothers and sisters into grief and despair. Those who instigate these attacks evidently wish to poison our relations, making use of all means, including religion, to oppose every attempt to build a peaceful, fair and serene life together."

On Saturday, the day before he returns to the Vatican, the pope paid courtesy calls on German political leaders, including Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrat who is challenging him in elections next month.

"We are very proud to have a German pope," said Ms. Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant clergyman.

On Saturday evening, the pope also led a vigil in a field outside of Cologne, in preparation for a huge Mass with young Catholics on Sunday that is expected to draw 800,000 or more worshipers from more than 190 countries.

"The church is like a human family, but at the same it is also the great family of God, through which he establishes an overarching communion and unity that embraces every continent, culture and nation," he said. "So we are glad to belong to this great family. We are glad to have brothers and friends all over the world."

In the following excerpt from a question answer session, Bishop Spong expresses his version of Christianity which is different than the official version. He states that all creeds, theology and ideas about God are man made and are bound by the historical context that they are formulated in. Each generation will perceive and understand the truth differently, hence ideas and creeds developed in a given historical context cannot be universalized. He then goes on to talk about what Christianity should be which is not very different than Ismailism within the context of the bond between a murid and the Murshid.

Ron from the Internet writes:
"I wonder if fiddling around on the periphery on the issues of gay and lesbian rights can ever yield what the Church lacks: a compelling vision which, if received and fulfilled, would improve humanity as a whole. Christianity has no unique truth and its claims, like those of all various religions, is that it must rest upon a "Thus saith the Lord." My own view, an ever-changing one I admit, is that the Church has no transcendent truth to offer and knows it full well. If nothing you offer has self-evident merit and you can't admit the truth and survive as an organization, then you resort to either intimidating everyone within into an orthodoxy no one sees the sense or benefit in obeying any longer or you wander aimlessly about preaching inoffensive feel-good messages that everyone agrees with anyway without getting out of bed early on a Sunday AM. Both directions lead to irrelevance and that is the crux of the matter. The Church is irrelevant because truth is irrelevant to the Church and it has nothing to offer that I can't get elsewhere without having to abandon my common sense or individual autonomy. It either demands orthodoxy in matters even school children should know are primitivistic and silly or it demands orthodoxy toward a nameless Care Bear worldview that scarcely needs a Church to propose it. Primitive tribal codes or anomie. Not much to choose between and not much to justify buildings, clergy, tax exemptions, satellite channels, etc. Jesus was either a deity or a lay preacher. Either there is a Christian God whose moral judgment is somehow clearer than our own and should be accepted, assuming it will provide a better result than a life of our own devising, or the religion is simply one of many religious delusions and a childish self-indulgence that intelligent modern humanity should leave behind. I don't see a middle ground that withstands rational examination. Even ER physicians know there is a time to stop trying to resuscitate a corpse."

Answer:

Dear Ron,

You raise fascinating and challenging issues for which I am grateful. You articulate well basic questions that the Church's leadership tends so often to ignore. Let me respond.

Human beings are responsible for the creation of every doctrine of God, every creed and every religious system. Since that it true then we should expect to see our religious ideas be constantly corrupted by the human need to control and to build power. Truth is always perceived subjectively which means that truth is perceived differently in every generation. There may well be objective and eternal truth but no human being possesses it, no human being can perceive it and no human being can articulate it. The assumption that one can is the place where destructive religious arrogance and the sin of idolatry always begin. How one understands reality, the level of knowledge that one possesses, and the time in which one lives are always factors in processing what religious people mistakenly call "Revealed Truth." That is when we make claims such as "our Pope is infallible," or "our Bible is inerrant," or my religion possesses the only pathway to God. Most religious systems never escape this mentality since certainty, even a pretended certainty, seems to bring a much-desired security to its adherents. However, human history reveals that when a religious group claims certainty, it also becomes demonic and tries to kill anyone who disagrees, challenges or threatens their claim to truth. Your criticism of Christianity seems to be a criticism of what the Church has done to and with Christians and others over the centuries. I think that is a valid criticism and one that must be heard.

At the same time, however, we need to recognize that while human beings certainly create their explanations of God, they do not, I am persuaded, create the experience of transcendence, the holy, and the Other that we have come to call God. So while I am willing to challenge any human explanation of God, I do not think that I can challenge either effectively or ultimately the reality of the experience of God.

Religious systems grow out of that experience. I live within the Christian religious system. I walk the Christ path into the mystery and wonder of God. I make no claim that my path is the only path or that my truth is the only truth. I regard God alone as Truth and I know that I do not possess God. I only journey toward God.

When I look at the life of Jesus, I see one who is fully alive, one who is totally and wastefully loving, one who has the courage and the ability to be all that he can be. Because I define my experience of God as that reality in which I find the fullness of life, the totality of love and the Ground of Being, I have no difficulty saying that in the life of Jesus, I believe I confront the presence of God. That is why I am committed to walking the Christ path.

Finally, I take seriously the words that the author of the Fourth Gospel put into the mouth of Jesus. Attempting to describe his purpose, Jesus is made to say, "I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly." If that is a statement of the purpose of Christ then I believe that must also be the purpose of the Church. That is where I find Christianity's compelling vision. The task of the Church is to build a world in which every person has a better chance to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that that person has the capability of being. So anything that diminishes life for anyone, whether on the basis of race, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation or even religion is evil and must be confronted. Anything that enhances life, increases love and calls others into being is good and must be encouraged.

It seems so simple to me. My work for justice for gay and lesbian people, that is the issue that prompted your letter, is not to me tangential to Christianity. It is rather the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. I hope this will help to clarify the issue. Thank you for forcing me to think this through again.

At present there is a great deal of controversy over the “virgin birth” of Jesus. The bible asserts that Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin when Jesus was born, i.e., his birth was immaculate. However there is a great deal of opposition to this view. Islam is off course quite clear on this issue as per Ayat 3:47: “She said: My Lord! How can I have a child when no mortal hath touched me? He said: So (it will be). Allah createth what He will. If He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! and it is.”

The following question answer supports the view that Jesus had a human father and talks about Jesus having non human chromosomes due to his immaculate birth! This I found quite fascinating. I thought of presenting this to make you aware of the debate.

Chris from Chicago writes:
"How can Christians believe that of Jesus' 46 chromosomes, 23 were contributed by a human and 23 by a non-human? If this was true and Jesus was unique wouldn't that make all other religions irrelevant? But "virgin births" are not unique to Christianity. They are present in many mythologies. Isn't the Council of Nicea's pronouncement on Jesus' divinity just a pre-emption to provide security and control? I don't believe there has been a single human being in the history of the world that didn't have two human parents, including Jesus.
Carlyle thought Jesus' father might have been a Roman soldier. If Jesus were illegitimate, that would go a long way to explaining his antipathy to his mother (see Mark 3:31-35, Mark 6:1-6, and John 2:1-11). Of course, you never hear the Catholic Church quoting the passage in Mark in any of its liturgies where Jesus replies to a question with, "Why do you call me good? Only God is good (Mark 10:18)."

Dear Chris,
You raise a series of very good questions. Many Christians, especially those in academic centers do not believe that of Jesus' 46 chromosomes, 23 were contributed by a non-human. If that were true it would mean that Jesus was not fully human, which is half of the Christ claim traditionally made by the Church. Virgin births are not unique to Christianity. That was the traditional way ancient societies explained their larger than life figures. No, I am quite convinced Jesus had a human mother and a human father. Please remember the Pauline claim that "God was in Christ, reconciling" was written decades before the virgin birth story entered Christian written history. A virgin birth was not part of the original Kerygma. It was added to the Christ story in the ninth decade of the Christian era.
First century people also did not understand genetics or the reproductive process. These ancient ones, caught as they were in an assumed patriarchy, did not see the woman as contributing to birth anything more than her nurturing womb. So if one wanted to speak of a person's divine origin, one had only to get rid of the human father. There was no need to get rid of the human mother, since her only function was to "nurture the divine seed."
But in 1724, the western world discovered that women have an egg cell and are, therefore, equal co-creators of every life that has ever lived. So if you literalize the myth of the Virgin Birth and pretend you are talking about biology, what you get is a Jesus with half human and half divine chromosomes. This would make him neither human nor divine but a kind of monster or at least something akin to a mermaid!
I do not know of a reputable New Testament scholar in the world today, Catholic or Protestant, who treats the birth stories about Jesus in Matthew and Luke as literal history. You might find one at Bob Jones University, Liberty Baptist College or Oral Roberts University. It also appears to be true that no Roman Catholic scholar will draw the proper conclusion from his or her scholarship and still be welcomed at the Vatican. Raymond Brown was the master politician on this subject prior to his death. The days of treating the birth narratives as history are simply over in scholarly circles and I think it is time we said so publicly.
I do not think that seeing the virgin birth as a mythological and symbolic way of saying we have met in this Jesus a God presence that human life could never have produced in no way invalidates the claim we make that God was in Christ. It does destroy the literalism in which we have bound him but I regard that as good riddance.

Paramahansa Yogananda in his book “The Second Coming of the Christ” explains the immaculate conception of Christ as:

[Many saints have been born in the natural way, and some in the immaculate way. The great ones who have attained liberation retain their individuality in Spirit; and at God’s behest to return to the world as saviors, they can take a physical body either by immaculate conception or natural birth. (In higher world ages, they may even do so by direct materialization – though that is not for the eyes of the unenlightened times.) The mode of birth does not matter, nor does it necessarily indicate the degree of divinity.

Sexual creation has the selfish sexual instincts of the parents in it. Therefore, some saints choose to be conceived in the immaculate way, the pure system of conception. So it is a fact that Jesus was created by immaculate conception. His mother Mary, she who “had found favour with God,” was filled with the Holy Ghost Cosmic Vibration: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Higher shall overshadow thee.” This sacred creative Vibration, suffused with the reflection of God as the Christ Consciousness, entered the ovum in Mary’s womb, immaculately creating the germ cell of life into which entered the soul of Jesus, the individualized Christ Consciousness. From this pristine cell, according to the pattern inherent in the soul of Jesus, grew the body in which Jesus the Christ was born. It is not a myth. Guatama Buddha (as also other avatars) was born in the same way. His mother saw the Spirit enter her body. As told in traditional Indian allegory in the Jataka (ancient Buddhist scripture):

“And lying down on the royal couch, she fell asleep and dreamed the following dream:

“The four guardian angels came and lifted her up, together with her couch, and took her away to the Himalaya Mountains…After clothing her with divine garments, they anointed her with perfumes and decked her with divine flowers. Not far off was Silver Hill, and in it a golden mansion. There they spread a divine couch with its head towards the east, and laid her down upon it.

Now the Future Buddha had become a superb white elephant,” and was wandering about at no great distance, on Gold Hill. Descending thence, he ascended Silver Hill, and approaching from the north, he plucked a white lotus with his silvery trunk, and trumpeting loudly, went into the golden mansion. And three times he walked round his mother’s couch, with his right side towards it, and striking her right side, he seemed to enter on her right side, he seemed to enter her womb. Thus the conception took place in the Midsummer Festival.

On the next day the queen awoke, and told the dream to the king. And the king caused sixty-four eminent Brahmins to be summoned…[and] told them the dream and asked them what would come of it?

‘Be not anxious, great king!’ said the Brahmins; ‘a child has planted itself in the womb of your queen…..You will have a son. And he, if he continue to live the household life , will become a Universal Monarch; but if he leave the household life and retire from the world, he will become a Buddha, and roll back the clouds of sin and folly of this world.’” (Havard Classics, Volume 45, Part 3: Buddhist Writings, trans. Henry Clarke Warren (New York: Collier, 1909))

There is a cosmic metaphysical symbolism in the wondrous conception and birth of Jesus. His incarnate Christ Consciousness came immaculately through the Virgin Mary. Likewise, the universal Christ Intelligence was born or reflected in the cosmic body of pure vibratory creation (Cosmic “Virgin Mary”) through the instrumentality of God the Father. The Holy Ghost Cosmic Vibration, Aum, Maha-Prakriti, is analogous to the Cosmic Virgin Mary because it is thus the mother of the immanent Universal Christ Intelligence, the Son of God, and of all created objects.]

The notion of "virgin birth" or Immaculate Conception is also found in our own heritage reflected in the lives of the "Paa(n)ch Paandavas".

Paramahansa Yogananda explains the divine parentage of the Pandava brothers in his translation and commentary of Bhagavad Gita "God Talks With Arjuna, The Bhgavad Gita" as:

"Pandu had two wives, Kunti (sister of Vasudeva, Krishna's father) and Madri. For the accidental killing of a sage during a hunting expedition, Pandu had been cursed that if he embraced a woman he would die. It thus seemed that he and his two queens must remain childless. But Kunti then revealed that before her marriage to Pandu she had received the blessing of a miraculous power: Impressed by her piety and devotional service, a sage had granted her five mantras with which she could receive offspring from any god she chose to invoke. When Kunti told Pandu of her mantras, he entreated her to use them. She bore three sons for Pandu: Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna from invoking respectively the devas Dharma, Vayu, and Indra. As Pandu wished Madri also to have a child, he asked Kunti to give the remaining sacred mantra to her*. Having obtained the mantra, Madri invoked the twin devas, the Ashvins, and thereby received twin sons, Nakula and Sahadeva."

* The fifth mantra had already been used by Kunti prior to her marriage to Pandu. To test her power, she invoked Surya, the sun deva and Karna was born to her - yet she remained a virgin. Nevertheless, fearing rebuke that she had mothered an illegitimate child, she sealed him in a box and set it afloat on the river, where he was found and raised by an aged charoteer. Karna later played a major role in the Mahabharata story, as mentioned in the commentary 1:8

The following article depicts the state of Christianity today. It points to some fundamental changes with regard to its approach to the Bible and related issues in light of the changed conditions today.

The Times October 05, 2005

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent


THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.


The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect "total accuracy" from the Bible.
"We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision," they say in The Gift of Scripture.

The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US.

Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwin's theory of evolution in schools, believing "intelligent design" to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began.

But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this country's Catholic bishops insist cannot be "historical". At most, they say, they may contain "historical traces".

The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible.

In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is "God's word expressed in human language" and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.
They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways "appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries".
The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: "We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters."

They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its "intransigent intolerance" and to warn of "significant dangers" involved in a fundamentalist approach.

"Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others."

Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, "His blood be on us and on our children", a passage used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had "tragic consequences" in encouraging hatred and persecution. "The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians."

As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.
Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.

The bishops say: "Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come."

In their foreword to the teaching document, the two most senior Catholics of the land, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Keith O'Brien, Archbishop of St Andrew's and Edinburgh, explain its context.

They say people today are searching for what is worthwhile, what has real value, what can be trusted and what is really true.
The new teaching has been issued as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council document explaining the place of Scripture in revelation. In the past 40 years, Catholics have learnt more than ever before to cherish the Bible. "We have rediscovered the Bible as a precious treasure, both ancient and ever new."

A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named their baby after a swear word. The Breakout Trust raised £200,000 to make the 30-minute animated film, It's a Boy. Steve Legg, head of the charity, said: "There are over 12 million children in the UK and only 756,000 of them go to church regularly.

That leaves a staggering number who are probably not receiving basic Christian teaching."

BELIEVE IT OR NOT
UNTRUE
Genesis ii, 21-22
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man
Genesis iii, 16
God said to the woman [after she was beguiled by the serpent]: "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
Matthew xxvii, 25
The words of the crowd: "His blood be on us and on our children."
Revelation xix,20
And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had worked the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with brimstone."

TRUE
Exodus iii, 14
God reveals himself to Moses as: "I am who I am."
Leviticus xxvi,12
"I will be your God, and you shall be my people."
Exodus xx,1-17
The Ten Commandments
Matthew v,7
The Sermon on the Mount
Mark viii,29
Peter declares Jesus to be the Christ
Luke i
The Virgin Birth
John xx,28
Proof of bodily resurrection

The following article that appeared in today's Calgary Herald illustrates the Church's approach to modernity. It is about a priest being disciplined for suggesting discussion on whether women should become priests.

Not a Christian approach

Calgary Herald



October 31, 2005







Father Ed Cachia, a Catholic priest in Cobourg, Ont., was removed from his position at St. Michael's Church not because he directly advocated the ordination of women priests, but because he suggested it was time to debate the issue.

That a mere suggestion for discussion should bring about the censure of a respected and popular priest, is troubling in a society that cherishes the principle of open debate and welcomes the free exchange of opinions.



All religions have a set of tenets which form the foundation of their faith. To deny these basic tenets would be to adulterate the faith. One cannot imagine Catholicism suddenly denouncing the concept of the Trinity, or of the intercessionary powers of saints, for then it would no longer be Catholicism. Likewise, one does not expect Judaism to make a 180-degree turn and embrace Jesus as its saviour.



However, there is a distinction between tenets of faith and issues that arise from contemporary living. For Catholicism, one of those is the ordination of women. Cachia argues there is no biblical or theological basis for excluding women from the priesthood. He rightly thinks debate would be healthy, but the church has chosen to shut him down.



It may be argued Cachia went overboard when he celebrated the Eucharist with women priests in the U.S. The church had a right to expect him not to participate in such a ritual, since it does not recognize female priests.



To oust him, however, for calling for debate is deeply disturbing. An inflexible church is one in decline, as witnessed by the dwindling numbers of churchgoers and those choosing a vocation as priests or nuns.



Deploring the "policy of silencing those who have different opinions," Cachia predicts that, "when you close the door on people, rebellion results."

Those results are the same, whether the door-closing is done by a religious institution or a dictatorial government.



Church and state may indeed be separate, but the church in western society co-exists in a democracy whose citizens, Catholic or otherwise, are free to speak their minds.



The church silences dissent at its own peril.

© The Calgary Herald 2005

'God Speaks to Each Person in Their Own Language'

Famed scholar Huston Smith on why different cultures have different faiths--and what they have in common.

Interview by Wendy Schuman



Frail at 86, suffering from severe osteoporosis and hearing loss, Huston Smith, the nation's preeminent authority on world religions, nevertheless embarked on his recent national book tour alone. He invited his Beliefnet interviewer to sit close so he could read her lips. With a beatific smile, he introduced himself with a warm, “Hello, I’m Huston.”

Smith, author of "The World's Religions," a best-seller still used in many college classrooms, has taken an experiential approach to studying world religions, training in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Japan, studying with a Sufi mystic in Iran, and spending a sabbatical in Tibet. He dug deeply into Judaism when his daughter married a Jew and converted. Time magazine has called him a “spiritual surfer.” "Christianity has always been my religious meal," Smith has said. "But I'm a great believer in vitamin supplements." His latest book, “The Soul of Christianity,” brings him home to his lifelong faith.

What is your favorite prayer?

Well, it shifts in different stages. But in the last two years I do have a favorite and it is the Jesus prayer. It is the one in “The Way of a Pilgrim.” You know the book? And it is in J.D. Salinger’s book.

Yes, Franny and Zooey.

The short version which I use is, “Oh Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.” And that’s become a kind of a mantra to me. And especially during times of--ordeal would be too strong--but special. I’ll just say special. This trip is a good example of that--it’s like a mantra that I’ve been saying over and over again. We are in good hands. And in gratitude for that fact we should bear one another’s burden. How do you think religions differ, and what do they have in common?

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it’s my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different. Necessarily so, because I believe that all of the eight historically important and enduring religions are divinely revealed. But we have a diverse world and different civilizations. God has to speak to each person in their own language, in their own idioms. Take Spanish, Chinese. You can express the same thought, but to different people you have to use a different language. It’s the same in religion.

Depending on the context, the time in history?

Well, let me come back to civilization. It is commonly said and known that each civilization has its own religion. Now my claim is that if we look deeper, the different civilizations were brought into being by the different revelations. I really believe that.

For example the revelation to Buddha.

And to the Hindus, and to the Jews, and to the Christians, and Native Americans. I mean we have to fiddle a little with words because they wouldn’t call themselves civilization, but, say, a world or something.

So the eight that you’re speaking of are …

The ones in my book [“The World’s Religions”]--Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and the Native American. Now there’s one thing that’s misleading, and that is to separate Confucianism and Daoism. Right now I’m working on a project which would speak of the East Asian religious complex. There’s one religion that has three strands--Confucianism, Daoism, and East Asian Buddhism. And so if I had it to do over again, I would not have separate chapters on Confucianism and Daoism.

Who do you think Jesus was? Was he another charismatic Jewish healer? Who are these people to whom religion, to whom God is revealed?

He was God incarnate. He was Christ. He was God in human form. That would be my succinct answer.

How does he compare with Buddha or other religious figures who receive revelation?

These religions–-though essentially the kernel is the same--the shell is not the same. They’re not carbon copies of each other. So Buddha did not claim that he was divine. But he serves the same role in Buddhism as Christ does in Christianity, and as the Qur’an does in Islam.

Not Muhammad, but the book?

There is a saying in religious scholarship if Christ was God made flesh--in Islam, the Qur’an is Allah made book.

Do you think it matters what religion we practice?

Matters in what sense? I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which. The answer is no, as long as each is followed with equal intensity, sincerity, dedication.

What is an authentic religion?

When you say authentic, are there some religions that are not authentic? What do you mean by authentic?

Revealed by God as proven by their impact on human history. I have studied [other religions], and I am certain they have not made impact on this earth.

Is it always a good impact in the sense of helping people live better lives?

In the sense of realizing their full potential.

In your book you seem critical of the scientific mentality.

No, wrong. I am critical of modernity giving science and technology a blank check as if it were the fountain of all truth. That is not true. And I think I may have introduced a word which has now caught on quite a bit, scientism. Science is good. It simply reports a discovery. Scientism smuggles in two untenable points. Namely, that science is, if not the only reliable, then the most reliable [way of knowing]. And second, that the stuff that science deals with, matter, is the most fundamental stuff of the universe. Those are not scientific statements. There is nothing in the way of science to prove they’re true. And truth to tell, they are both wrong. So I am not against genuine science. I think scientism may come close to doing us in, but I think we’re in the nick of time discovering the mistake. Our culture will be opening out to allow the religious worldview to enter.

When I think of the religious worldview, I can’t help thinking of fundamentalists and evangelicals. Is that the religious worldview that you’re speaking of?

I think we’re polarized. We are hamstrung between an unworkable, dogmatic, uncharitable religious fundamentalism, and the liberalism, mainline churches that are losing membership disastrously. The reason being that they are accommodating too much to modern secularism.

What do you mean by accommodating to modern secularism?

To enter seminaries you have to have a university degree. The universities are secular to the core. And it’s inevitable that the professors in seminary will have been-–I’m going to use violent language--brainwashed by the university, which is unequivocally secular. So the secularism of the university rubs off on seminary professors. And then ministers, pastors, must in the mainline churches, most have a seminary degree. So you can just see the secularism of our culture is infiltrating. The mainline churches, they adhere to the language [of faith]. But the adherent does not have the power, the force of the unbrainwashed Christian.

Can you give me an example of what you’re talking about?

Well, let me come home. My heritage is Methodist, from my missionary parents [who raised me in rural China]. When I came to this country I went to a religious college. But when I went to graduate school--one year was at University of California at Berkeley. And being a Christian Methodist, I went to Trinity Methodist Church. Seated 800, always filled, standing room only. And then I went East, had a career. Now I’m back at that same church. The church has sold the sanctuary, which is divided into I don’t know how many floors and office buildings. And our congregation meets in the chapel. And we have under a hundred people on an average Sunday. And we’re still losing ground. Something has gone out of the dynamic of mainline.

How do you see religion helping us in the future? And what do you hope for your own children and grandchildren.

One of my favorite quotations from the Bible is “I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet.” I don’t know what’s going to happen. But the best I can say is, if we pull out of our scary political situation, then the world is wide open in the West and we live in a Westernizing world. What happens here is going to eventually happen around the world. We live in a time when secularism is over.

Archibald MacLeish said, “An age ends when its metaphor dies.” And the metaphor of modernity has been endless progress through endless technology. And that is dead.

Is there a new metaphor that includes religion or spirituality?

Oh yes, because we’re religious creatures. And the new metaphor will give every ounce of our strength to compassion. And help not just our own people, but everyone.

Do you think that religious phenomena, like the virgin birth, are symbolic or literal?

Symbolic. [Just as] science can access the very small and the unimaginably large with their special language, which is mathematics and equations, we in religion need a technical language to describe sacred things. And this [language] is myth, poetry, parable. Jesus spoke to them in parables. And so everything that transpires in that infinite world of the divine must be expressed metaphorically, not literally.

So when we talk of the virgin birth, it resonates with something in us about purity, about divinity.

No, no, don’t try to say it. In ordinary language it won’t work. Something happened. Something happened. And I sincerely believe it really happened. And it was really vital, crucial to Christ. But don’t try to psych it out in ordinary language. Go at it in terms of symbols, which stretch our understanding from the finite to the infinite.

Reflections on the significance of Easter (2006).

Symbols of hope unite faiths
Two solemn religious holidays share a message for mankind

Published: Sunday, April 16, 2006
There has been much said about the erosion of religious observance throughout the western world. Within the course of several generations, the weekly routine of church, synagogue, mosque or temple attendance has waned to sporadic visits on a few special days.

Yet, amidst the clatter of modern secularism, there endures, for many, a profound pull to the ideas, history and meaning that religious teachings encompass. Such connections are evident this weekend as two of the world's great religions mark sacred holidays.

For Christians, it is Easter, a time of sorrow followed by liberation, as the tragic gives way to redemption. Although this holiday has been largely eclipsed in popularity by Christmas, it is the most holy of Christian festivals -- marking the death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection, as a symbol that eternal life would be granted to all who believe.

At sundown Wednesday, Jews began the eight-day festival of Passover with a traditional Seder dinner that re-enacts the exodus from Egypt after 400 years of slavery.

This is a time to remember the hardships endured and re-experience the wonder and joy of that night more than 3,000 years ago when the Egyptian Pharoah was forced by God to let the Hebrews go free.

It is a coincidence of calendars that both holidays fall at the same time this year and attempts to compare the two -- like Christmas and Hanukkah -- are disrespectful to both. What the two celebrations do share, though, are enduring symbols of hope.

Passover is all about symbolism. At the Seder, a lamb bone reminds Jews of the lamb that was killed to mark the doorways so that the people living in those houses would be spared when the Angel of Death passed over. The egg is a symbol of new life. Parsley is dipped into salt water and eaten to remember that God provided for them in the wilderness. Horseradish signifies the bitterness of slavery, and charoset, a fruit, nut, wine and spice mixture, is symbolic of the sweetness of freedom.

For Christians, the resurrection of Christ at Easter is the ultimate symbol -- of the possibility of salvation and eternal life after death. Colours used in worship ceremonies are visual markers of the Lenten journey from the black of Good Friday to the purity of white on Easter Sunday and the gold that represents the light of the world, or enlightenment, brought by the risen Christ.

Even Easter eggs, derided as the ultimate secularization of the holiday, have historical roots. In ancient times, Christians didn't eat eggs during Lent to remind them of dying with Christ. As part of the celebration of the resurrection, they were a sign of new life.

Observant or not, human beings yearn for some element of meaning in their lives. And even as fewer participate in organized religion, their fascination with religious symbols and stories continues. Note the intense interest in recent months over books about the life of Christ -- The Da Vinci Code; Holy Blood, Holy Grail; and The Jesus Papers -- and the just-released documentary The Gospel of Judas.

Somehow, even as modern society leaves the trappings of religion behind, it takes with it principles and faith, and a curiosity to learn more.

As adherents celebrate their holy holidays this weekend -- and we wish them Godspeed -- others may care to pause to consider, too, the messages of hope these holidays reflect.

© The Calgary Herald 2006

***
Windows Onto Eternity

Published: Sunday, April 16, 2006
Easter is not a festival celebrating a popular myth, but a claim of the historical reality of a physical event.

That historical event has always been asserted and defended in creeds, first in the Apostles' Creed of the early second century:

". . . he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day, he rose again from the dead. . . " -- Easter.

In the post-modern world, creeds have gotten a bad rap, even among Christians, for being "divisive." And denominational fights over statements of faith have become legendary.

But renowned Canadian theologian James Packer of Vancouver's Regent College says they are necessary to a community of faith, making factual claims about history. So credal arguments are no reason to abandon creeds, no more than squabbles are cause to abandon the institution of marriage.

"The Apostles' Creed arose from the need for a syllabus of the religious instruction of adults," says Packer.

"The clauses all read like headings for individual classes: I believe in One God, the Father, his Son, his death, resurrection and reign, the future resurrection of the faithful . . ."

This instructional material came in response to the claims of Gnostic mystics, who taught that Jesus never suffered real physical death and bodily resurrection, because he was a pure spirit who merely seemed to inhabit a human body, says the Anglican Packer.

"Christian theology is based on the creed's historical claim, that the creator God really did intrude into a particular moment in the world's history, like a playwright writing himself into his own play," Packer says.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the divine intrusion began 1,900 years earlier, when the creator of the universe made a family pact with a particular tribe in a backwater wilderness.

The first creed, claiming to report a real historical event, was the

Hebrew Shema, taught by Moses as Israel entered the Promised Land in 1300 BCE:

"Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

"Blessed be the Name of His kingdom for ever and ever;

"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might" (Deut 6:4).

The Shema is sung within many prayers, says House of Jacob Mikvah Israel rabbi Zev Friedman; but it is fundamentally a statement of faith.

"It asserts the unity of the creator, and it states that God is not just a creator, but is the Lord, intimately involved in the life of Israel -- whoever Israel is," Friedman says.

Packed in the Shema is the claim that, at one moment in a desert wilderness, the creator made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, later called Israel. That historical claim placed the God of Israel beyond both impersonal cosmic Mind of the philosophers, and the personal but irrational deities of the polytheists.

Charles Nienkirchen, spirituality professor at Alliance-Nazarene University College, says the fathers of the early Christian Church called the creeds "symbole" images of God.

"They saw the creeds like verbal icons, linguistic windows onto eternity," Nienkirchen says.

"You begin to see God through the window, but God is always beyond the window. For this reason, creeds are meant to be prayed, not said."

Nienkirchen says there's a new appreciation of creeds on the part of people fleeing "rootless, historyless Christianity." They feel a need to supplement their sentimental attachment to "friend Jesus" with the deeper, ancient appreciation of the Trinity as an "eternal communion of three persons," he says.

This is needed, if Jesus Christ is to be seen not merely as a very good man, but as God and the eternal Word of God.

Creeds and denominational statements of faith do differ, Nienkirchen says. The challenge is obeying reformer John Calvin's dictum: "Unity in essentials, diversity in non-essentials, and charity in all things."

That's "the ongoing task since the founding of the church," he says, and the creeds are not obstacles, but rather the path to Christian unity.

"Without the creeds, some of us, individually or collectively, will make poor estimates of what's essential," he says.

"The creeds are the church's best thinking on life's most important issues."

Early this year, for example, the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada, at the Vatican's encouragement, announced it is dropping the "Filioque Clause" from the 1,600-year-old Nicene Creed it sings at mass every Sunday.

The Filioque Clause?

This may seem theological hair-splitting. But this hair has deep roots. The split has been a 1,000-year disaster; and healing it could have historic consequences -- an Easter resurrection of the church in Eastern and Western Europe.

In 381 AD, at the Council of Constantinople, the world's bishops put finishing touches on the creed first drafted at Nicea, 56 years earlier.

That completed Nicene Creed became the fullest, most classic expression of mystery-laden Trinitarian Christianity:

"I believe in One God, the Father Almighty . . .

"I believe in One Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten, not made, one in being with the Father . . .

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father . . ."

Jesus had said, "Who sees me sees the Father," and "Before Abraham was, I am." So the questions, How could the One be Father-Son-Spirit? Or three be one? were unapologetically asserted a mystery of the faith.

The council's assertions that the Son is eternally "generated, not made," and that the Spirit eternally "proceeds from the Father," affirmed the eternal community of God.

That has been Christianity -- with the exception of one, painful issue -- for 16 centuries.

In the sixth century, in response to a local heresy, the Western Latin Church began to describe the Holy Spirit as "proceeding from the Father and (filioque) the Son." This followed Jesus' words that he would "send the Holy Spirit" after his return to heaven.

To the Eastern church, the "double procession" of the Filioque seemed to demote the Holy Spirit to the status of a mere "third wheel." It seemed to over-analyse and violate the whole mysterious notion of the indivisible unity of Three Persons in One God.

And after centuries of bad blood, in 1054, the Pope in Rome and the Patriarch in Constantinople excommunicated each other, completing the Great Schism between Western and Eastern Christianity.

That schism has shaped history ever since: fuelling the sack of Constantinople by Crusaders in 1204; inhibiting Latin aid to halt Islam's conquest of the Balkans and Constantinople in 1453; even leaving Orthodox Russia vulnerable to the Marxist coup in 1917.

"It seemed to downplay the role of the Spirit in the West, setting the stage for the rise of Pentecostalism in the 20th century," muses Nienkirchen.

Meanwhile, the minority Eastern Catholics -- Ukrainian, Greek, Romanian, Armenian -- have always been both bridges and bones of contention between Eastern and Western Christianity. Evangelized by the Orthodox in the 10th century, they later came under Rome.

Under Polish influence, Orthodox churches in western Ukraine pledged loyalty to Rome in 1595. While they kept their Byzantine liturgy, they added the Filioque to the Nicene Creed's description of the Holy Spirit proceeding "from the Father and the Son." And that further embittered Orthodox-Catholic relations.

"It was really a difference in perspective," says Ukrainian Catholic Bishop David Motiuk in Winnipeg.

"The Western church stressed the mission of the Spirit, sent forth by the Son to his church. The Eastern church stressed the origin or being of the Spirit, one with the Father."

Polish former pope John Paul II spent his 26-year pontificate trying to improve Catholic relations with the Orthodox, whom he called "Christianity's second lung." And for their part, "uniate" Byzantines, loyal to Rome, have sought a return to their roots in the East.

Hence the decision earlier this year by the Ukrainian Catholics to strike the Filioque.

"Different perspectives should give us a fuller understanding, but it shouldn't be divisive," says Motiuk.

"We're a religion of hope. I firmly believe our relations with the Orthodox have great challenges, but great opportunities."

Fraternal relations between the world's 1.1 billion Catholics and 250 million Orthodox could encourage greater friendship with 500 million Protestants and 300 million "other" Christians. But that may need deliberations on creed, like the 1999 Catholic and Lutheran Joint Declaration on Justification.

"Creeds are a summary of the most basic foundations of our faith; they speak to the core of what it means to be part of the faithful in Christ," says Motiuk.

"Our faith in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is our call to communion, our call to family as God is a family. We're always called to imitate the Trinity. We are to live with one another in the unity of the Trinity."

Fr. Larry Reinheimer of St. Peter the Aleut Orthodox in Marda Loop says the Filioque issue, however obscure, has been a major cause of the East-West split.

"It'd be nice to think that we could actually move toward the unification of Christianity," says Reinheimer.

"But it can't be based simply on some vague love of Jesus. It has to be credal. What we believe is who we are. And the creed is the collective experience of the church in receiving the revelation of God."

Anglican theologian Packer says that in the Trinity, "the threeness of the persons is just as fundamental as the oneness of divine being." However mysterious that seems, adhering to the mystery is necessary to avoid the oversimplifications of unitarianism or polytheism.

"God is a community of love, and out of that eternal community of love comes all creation," Packer says.

"I always say from the pulpit that salvation is a team effort."

Accepting (if not understanding) Jesus as God in the Trinity is essential to the meaning of his Good

Friday sacrifice and Easter resurrection: "Only if the son who becomes Jesus has in himself the life of God, can we look to him to give us the life of God," Packer says.

jwoodard@theherald.canwest.com

The Apostles' Creed

(circa AD 140)

I believe in God,

the Father Almighty,

the Creator of heaven and earth,

And in Jesus Christ,

His only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived

of the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died

and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day He rose again

from the dead.

He ascended into heaven

and sits at the right hand of God

the Father Almighty,

whence He shall come

to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body

and life everlasting.

Amen