The Top Ten Religious News Stories of 2006
a sermon given by the Rev. Roger Paine and Claire Phillips-Thoryn
on Sunday, January 7, 2007
at The First Parish in Lincoln
“It is never too late or too early to care for the well being of the soul.”
– Epicurus
This is the seventh sermon I’ve given on the top ten religious news stories of the year just ended.
I prowl through a year’s worth of three news magazines, several journals and newspaper clippings,
I check some Internet sites, and cobble together a list that seems on the mark;
then I compare it with a list voted on by the Religion Newswriters Association.
The end result is this sermon, and I asked Claire to partner with me in doing it this year
so we’d have her perspective as well – she and I will take turns getting us from #10 to #1.
We haven’t practiced – we don’t know how this will go – so we’re just going to haul off and give it!
Let me begin, though, with a story I’ve pulled, in memoriam, out of the mix:
In Memoriam: William Sloane Coffin, 1924-2006
Bill was the chaplain at Yale when I was a divinity student there.
He was a progressive Christian and an activist whose straight talk and sense of humor
made him well-liked and respected even by people who strongly disagreed with him.
He believed the church is called
“to respond to biblical mandates like truth-telling, confronting injustice and pursuing peace.”
He was the most riveting, entertaining, life-changing preacher I’ve ever heard.
In his later years, he hated seeing religious and political fundamentalists
dominate our national discourse on what our faith and our country require of us,
and he hated the tone: the overbearing self-righteousness he heard on both the left and the right.
Bill was 81 when he died last April 12th.
He gave a sermon from this pulpit in the fall of 2002,
and here, in his own words, is a little of what he said to us that Sunday:
“Had I but one wish for all the churches in America today,
I think it would be that they come to see the difference between charity and justice:
charity is a matter of personal attributes; justice is a matter of public policy.
Charity seeks to alleviate the worst effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it.
Charity in no way affects the status quo – which is why charity is so popular in middle-class churches –
while justice leads inevitably to political confrontation.
“Religion and politics, although distinct, do mix and to claim otherwise is to misunderstand both.
I underscore this today for the sake of our tormented and endangered planet.
To survive, it will require of far more religious people a politically committed spirituality.
“A politically committed spirituality contends against wrong without becoming wrongly contentious.
We have to keep the faith – despite the evidence –
knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing.”
When Bill died last spring, halfway between Palm Sunday and Easter,
I’m sure heaven had no idea what had just hit it – and it’s been a lot more fun there ever since.
10. The Gospel of Judas (Claire)
If there is one thing that Christians know, it is that Judas Iscariot is a bad guy. He’s the ultimate sinner, villain, and betrayor. And then archeologists discovered something that rocked the world of religion scholars and historians. They found an ancient document, probably written in the second century, that told of a different Judas—a tormented, compassionate, spiritual man who was compelled by Jesus himself to put the Passion of the Crucifixion in motion. The Gospel says that Jesus loved Judas the best, and gave him a terrifying and crucial mission. In the Gospel, Jesus says to Judas, “You will release the man who clothes me.”
Scholars knew that such a document was thought to have existed—the very powerful bishop and theologian Iraneus, in 180 AD, blasted the heresies contained in the Gospel of Judas. Iraneus was the bishop who chose the four gospels that are included in our New Testament today. How and why he chose the ones he did we will never truly know—all we know is the Gospel of Judas didn’t make the cut, and so it almost disappeared forever, until it was found buried in a tomb in Egypt.
The Gospel of Judas was translated and published this year. It reminds us that religion and belief are a complicated matters. When we think we know the answers, new information comes to surprise and challenge us. The more we learn about the beliefs and stories of early Christians, the more we find room for questions and wonder and possibility within our own life of faith. The Gospel of Judas reminds us that God is too big to contain in one gospel—or one book—or one religion. There is always another story, another interpretation, another way of seeking to understand life’s greatest mysteries.
9. The latest study on whether prayer “works” (Roger)
In just the last six years, there have been ten studies on prayer, each asking the same question:
does prayer work? when you pray for someone, is there any measurable benefit?
The latest and largest of these studies was completed last year.
More than 1,800 heart patients were divided into three groups,
and there were also three prayer groups – people who the heart patients didn’t know personally.
The first two patient groups were told they might or might not be prayed for.
Group Three was told they would definitely be prayed for.
The prayers started on the night before each person’s surgery and continued for the next two weeks.
Medical teams kept track of post-surgical complications in each group.
In Groups One and Two – remember they were told they might or might not be prayed for –
Group One was prayed for and Group Two was not, and they fared about the same.
But the patients in Group Three – the only people who knew for sure they were being prayed for –
actually did worse: they had more medical complications
than patients in the other two groups.
So the prayers did have an effect – but not the one you would have wanted!
Some observers think the Group Three patients may have felt extra pressure because of the prayers.
What I wonder is: what if, instead of being prayed for by strangers,
you know you are prayed for by your family, your friends, and members of your church –
the people who know you – would that change the result of the study?
A good humanist in this church once asked me what good it does to include prayers in this service.
He doesn’t believe in God, so who’s listening?
I said: even if you’re right about that, at least 200 people all shared a thought about the same thing,
whether it’s someone we know in the hospital, or people we don’t know in Darfur,
so, just for a few moments, we’re all thinking about the same thing.
And as a result, maybe we see each other – and even strangers in far-off lands – a little more clearly.
He thought that was a good enough reason to keep saying our prayers.
8. Same sex marriage bans pass in seven of eight states (Claire)
Same sex marriage was in the news this year, with advocates for and against using religious reasoning. Same sex marriage bans passed in seven of eight states that hold referendums on the issue during mid-term elections; Arizona was the first state in which voters defeated a same-sex marriage ban. Meanwhile, the New Jersey Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples are entitled to the same benefits as married couples. In Massachusetts, same-sex marriage is still legal, but still under attack.
Religions and cultures have always struggled with sexual morality, and every era brings a new form of what is supposedly right and true. My hope is that our country goes towards greater acceptance, and understanding that love is a blessing, no matter what your gender or your partner’s gender is. I find even a glimmer of hope in the marriage bans: such a desperate attempt to stop the cultural trend towards tolerance reminds me of Prohibition, and we know how well that worked. The religious right will not be able to stop people from doing what they are already doing: living together, raising families, loving each other. I hope the coming years will find more Americans, not just the ones in Arizona, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, realizing that civil marriage is a civil right.
7. Mary Magdalene (Roger)
Three years ago, she was the #1 story on my list.
She’s back on it because she was everywhere last year –
as the spring issue of Ms. Magazine noted, she was in bookstores, seminar rooms,
on the history channel, at the movies, and on the cover of Newsweek.
And her move to center stage is emblematic of the leading role women are now playing in the church.
Let me quickly remind you of three things we know about Mary Magdalene:
she was there when Jesus died on the cross, unlike the rest of his disciples;
when she went to anoint his body, she became the first witness to the resurrection;
and she was not a first-century hooker – far from it.
She was probably the daughter of a successful trader, and she may have been an epileptic –
we know that she showed up one day where Jesus was teaching and healing,
hoping to be cured of a condition no doctors had been able to help her with.
She stayed with Jesus and his followers from that day on.
It’s very possible that she became his most-loved disciple.
Scholars who have studied her, including Karen King at Harvard,
doubt that she and Jesus were ever married, or even romantically involved,
as Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, would have it.
Dr. King prefers to let Mary Magdalene stand on her own:
she was brave, smart, and devoted, a natural mystic and a leader among the disciples –
she really understood what Jesus was saying and explained his teachings to the others.
In other words, she was a major source of information about Jesus,
but the bible never mentions her again after her vision at the empty tomb –
it was impossible even for a woman as strong as she was to be accepted as a spiritual leader.
But the times, they are a-changin’.
The Episcopal church just elected a woman as its presiding bishop.
Three of the most prominent old Boston churches downtown now have women as senior ministers.
So in a year when so many religious leaders fell so far short, this story is very good news!
6. Religion in the popular culture (Claire)
Time Magazine recently announced the person of the year: YOU. Thanks to the internet, digital video, and blogging, human beings have found a deeply satisfying new mode of communication: anyone can be a journalist, a detective, a star. When the internet was still a baby, many people bemoaned how isolated it would make people: remember the fear of bowling alone? And yet, thanks to the internet, we have even more ways of communicating, making friends, and sharing stories.
I think this is a religious news story, and here is why. Religion is one of the main ways human beings make sense of the world, and how we understand ourselves. Who am I? What matters to me? Who are you and what matters to you? What is the meaning of it all? Human beings have been puzzling this through in conversation and writing as long as we’ve had language. But now any human being can put their wonderings online and find other kindred souls out there—people who live thousands of miles away in geography, but only a click away online.
This revolution reminds me of how the printing press made it possible for anybody to own a book; the internet makes it possible for anyone to publish a book, or any other type of writing. In some ways, the internet is the new confessional box. Time Magazine honored the fact that more people are doing this now than ever before. You, the person of the year, can be honest and vulnerable. You can be anonymous or not anonymous. And you, like millions of others, can find solace, friendship, and perhaps a large appreciative audience in the online world.
5. Apologies (Roger)
2006 was the year for apologies in high places.
Two prominent Catholics apologized for saying hateful things –
Mel Gibson, who was drunk, for saying that Jews were the cause of all our wars,
and the Pope, who was sober, for using an old quote describing Islam as “evil and inhuman.”
The Pope never apologizes, so when he said he was “deeply sorry” for offending the Muslim world,
it was a big story – #2 on the Religion Newswriters list.
The president of the National Association of Evangelical Christians also had some apologizing to do.
Pastor Ted Haggard, a frequent visitor to the White House,
apologized to his mega-church in Colorado Springs and resigned
after it came out that for several years, he had paid a gay male escort for sex. (#4)
Pastor Ted was loudly, and hypocritically, anti-gay,
but he was also a leader among evangelical Christians on environmental issues,
and any fall from such great heights is a sad and sobering story.
4. Events in the Catholic Church (Claire)
The Catholic Church made a lot of news this year. Roger just mentioned the apology to Muslims by the Pope. The Pope followed this unheard of apology by a trip to Turkey to continue to make amends. In America, Catholic victims of abuse by priests are still receiving vast payouts from the church—just recently the diocese of Seattle has offered 48 million to the plaintiffs.
And this July, a group of women were secretly ordained as Roman Catholic priests. One of these women was Jean Marchant, former director of healthcare ministry for the Boston archdiocese. The Catholic church does not recognize these ordinations, but to me there is great strength and bravery in their fights for change. They won’t abandon their faith, but they also won’t deny their calling simply because the men in charge tell them to. It seems to me in these stories that American Catholics are finding their voice and autonomy within a power structure that has disenfranchised them for so long—and I’m excited to see how these laypeople and new priests affect the larger church.
3. The evolution of evangelical Christianity (Roger)
Most evangelical Christians don’t believe in evolution – but they’re evolving in spite of themselves!
It’s a mistake to think of them as a single-minded bunch of biblical literalists
who all want prayer back in the public schools and bans on abortion and gay marriage.
They are, in fact, much more complicated than that.
When the president vetoed a bill to expand stem-cell research that had passed both houses of Congress,
he was sticking up for his own beliefs – and, he thought, pleasing his evangelical “base” –
but then came the November election...
In Missouri, a state which has evangelical Christians wall-to-wall,
a Democrat who supports new stem cell research was elected to the Senate
over a Republican who opposed it.
In South Dakota, voters overwhelmingly threw out a new anti-abortion law
that was so extreme, it banned abortions even in cases of rape or incest –
in both cases, people wanted a more thoughtful and compassionate response.
Meanwhile, Rick Warren, the pastor at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California,
a 21,000-member evangelical church, has become an activist on global warming
and in responding to the AIDs crisis in Africa – and he’s bringing lots of folks with him.
Many evangelicals want a return to civility in both politics and religion,
and they share what is thought of as a liberal Christian view of the purpose of the church:
to help the poor, take care of God’s own creation, and strive for justice and for peace.
2. The Amish schoolhouse shootings – and forgiveness (Claire) #7
Forgiveness made headlines this year. The shootings in the Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania shocked Americans; but what may have shocked Americans more was the outpouring of forgiveness, sympathy, and caring towards the attacker and his family. The man who shot the schoolgirls turned his gun on himself. The families of the Amish girls told the public they would not receive aid or gifts unless there was also a fund set up for his family. They forgave the killer, and many members of the Amish community attended his funeral. The Amish try to live simply and by Jesus’ teachings, and in this terrible and sad incident we saw how powerfully they take Jesus’ call to love your enemy.
Closer to home, Bostonians had their own story of the power of forgiveness. Five year old Kai Leigh Harriott forgave the man whose gun sent a stray bullet through her family’s home in Dorchester, paralyzing her. When her family confronted him in court, they showed no anger or bitterness. Her mother hugged the man and whispered in his ear: “Here is your chance for a new beginning; don’t let God down.” Little Kai Leigh said, “I know he didn’t mean to do it; I still forgive him.”
In both of these stories, we see great hurt met with great courage and peace. We see pain softened with forgiveness. We see how we all can be called to forgive even those who do us great harm.
1. Religious Polarization (Roger – and Claire agrees)
It is a sad day when this is story #1.
When newspapers in Denmark and other European countries
published cartoons that Muslims saw as an insult to the prophet Mohammed,
tens of thousands of Muslims on three continents rioted and burned buildings. (#1)
Scores of both Christians and Muslims were killed in riots in Nigeria.
This was the #1 story on the Religion Newswriters’ list.
Their #3 story was the growing rift in the Episcopal Church
over the ordination of a gay bishop three years ago, and the fact that their new presiding bishop,
Katharine Jefferts Schori, supported his ordination.
The Episcopal Church has lost over 115,000 members in the past three years;
seven churches in Virginia just left the national church over this issue,
and nine dioceses are shunning the leadership of their new presiding bishop.
Huston Smith, who is one of the world’s leading experts on comparative religions,
believes that religious conservatives and liberals in this country are so polarized
that they just “cancel each other out – and therefore leave our culture adrift, religiously.”
How did things come to this?
Some of our earlier stories provide a silver lining,
but too often we are seeing what a psychologist friend of mine calls “terminal solutions” –
if I can’t change it, I’ll end it.
Is it really no longer possible for people with differing views to sit and listen to each other?
Huston Smith suggests that people on both sides have a blind spot,
so “each has a hold on part of the truth” but can’t see the whole truth –
not without talking to each other.
The sticking point for conservatives is thinking that they alone already know the whole truth.
For liberals, it’s an over-emphasis on science and reason, which Smith says “can only take us so far,”
because they have “no connector for that upper story” –
you can’t live a full life “in half a world.”
You can’t live a full life in half a world.
Making plenty of room for both halves – that’s a worthy mission for any church in the new year.
Amen.
______________________________________
The Religion Newswriters Association List:
1. Muslims in a number of countries react violently to publication of Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and other European nations. Scores of both Christians and Muslims are killed in riots in Nigeria.
2. Pope Benedict XVI angers Muslims by including in a speech a centuries-old quote linking Islam and violence. He apologizes and later smooths the waters on a trip to Turkey.
3. The Episcopal Church riles convervatives when the General Convention elects a presiding bishop who supported the consecration of a U.S. gay bishop, which conservatives oppose as unbiblical. Nine dioceses refuse to recognize the leadership of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
4. Charismatic leader Ted Haggard resigns as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and is dismissed as pastor of the huge New Life Church in Colorado Springs after allegations surface of gay sex and methamphetamine use.
5. Candidates backed by the religious right suffer a series of defeats in the fall elections, with many voters citing morality as one of the strongest motivators in the way they cast their ballot.
6. Religious voices grow louder for peace in Iraq, but by year’s end experts fear the spread of sectarian tensions throughout the Middle East. Conflicts between Sunni and Shiite Muslims increase, and the Israeli incursion in Lebanon aimed at curbing attacks by Hezbollah touches off major strife within Lebanon. Christian churches also reconsider efforts to pressure Israel on the Palestinian question.
7. The schoolhouse shooting deaths of five Amish girls in Bart Township, PA, draws international attention on the Amish community’s ethic of forgiveness after some Amish attend the killer’s funeral.
8. (tie) The release of the film The Da Vinci Code adds to the previous buzz about Dan Brown’s novel. Religious critics, who say the book portrays traditional Christianity as a fraud, are divided over whether to boycott the film or hold discussion groups. Controversial plot lines include Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and conceiving a child.
8. (tie) Same sex marriage bans pass in seven of eight states that hold referendums on the issue during the mid-term elections; Arizona becomes the first state in which voters defeat a same-sex marriage ban. Meanwhile, the New Jersey Supreme Court rules that same-sex couples are entitled to the same benefits as married couples.
10. President Bush casts his first veto to defeat a bill calling for expanded stem-cell research, to the delight of religious conservatives and the disappointment of more liberal ones. The issue is later credited for playing a deciding role in the key Missouri Senate race.
Missing the cut were these stories:
11. A group of evangelical leaders calls for a stronger response to environmental concerns, especially global warming.
12. The genocide in Darfur, which is based more on nationality than religion, draws increasing attention from religious groups, but a solution seems unattainable.
13. Samuel Alito, Jr., a Roman Catholic, is confirmed as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, giving the high court its first Catholic majority in history.
14. Hollywood makes major plays for religious audiences, some more successful than others.
15. Roman Catholic dioceses continue to make payouts in the sexual-abuse scandals, capped by Los Angeles’ decision to settle 45 lawsuits for $60 million. Davenport, Iowa becomes the fourth U.S. diocese to seek bankruptcy protection.