Faiths and Worldviews
Items on religions, ideologies, philosophies, and other ways people interpret the world
New Approach to Muslim States?
Tue 30 Sep 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte
Last week a diverse group of political, business, military, academic, and religious leaders released a report, Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations With the Muslim World. Convened by the Search for Common Ground and the Consensus Building Institute, the group issued several recommendations, including the promotion of economic growth and good governance in Muslim states.
They summarized their work thus:
A Faith-based Prime Minister
Mon 29 Sep 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte
Last week former British Prime Minister Tony Blair began his stint as a Yale professor. His course, “Faith and Globalization,” grows out of his effort since leaving political office to assert a constructive role for religious belief in democratic society. Earlier this year, Blair launched a new organization devoted to this purpose, the London-based Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Here’s what Blair had to say at a Westminster Cathedral event announcing his new venture:
Redefining Democracy, Ethics, and Evangelicalism
Thu 04 Sep 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Peter Boyer wonders whether Barack Obama and the Democratic Party can capture the votes of supposedly disaffected conservative Christians, both Catholics and Protestants. Political strategists, of course, are wondering the same. Yet the article, “Party Faithful: Can the Democrats Get a Foothold on the Religious Vote?” treats recent political history as clumsily as it does Christian eschatology. It seems to be an essay on an eager, yet ultimately fruitless quest for a thesis.
The X-Files and the Enlightenment Myth
Tue 26 Aug 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Joseph Loconte
If there is one notion that has catapulted into popularity in the post-9/11 era, it is that religious belief is the iniquitous inspiration for the world’s repression and violence. The unexamined assumption is that reason, human rights, and democracy are the ripened fruit of secularism and the Enlightenment. This is what animates authors such as Christopher Hitchens when he claims “religion poisons everything.” It has become a best-selling theme.
A shorthand version of this idea goes like this: the decline of revealed religion leads to human freedom that leads to human flourishing. End of story. How can a viewpoint so manifestly at odds with history be held so passionately, so reflexively, by so many?
Islamist Ideology in the UK: Doing Fine
Sun 10 Aug 2008 by David Aikman
Three years after “7/7,” the British version of 9/11, when four suicide bombers immolated themselves and fifty-two other innocents—British people, foreign residents, or visitors to the UK, including Muslims and an Israeli woman who feared to return to Israel because of the danger of suicide bombings—any belief that the Islamist rage fueling the murderous rampage grew out of economic resentment has surely been laid to rest.
At least two new two pieces of information back up this view. First, poll after poll has revealed that British-born Muslims at British universities share a view of Islam dangerously sympathetic to Islamism, the preferred technical term for radical Islamic ideology. Second, two former British Islamists, Ed Husain and Maarjid Nawaz, have founded a counter-extremist Islamic think-tank in the UK that exposes the domestic roots of British Islamic extremism and is attempting to counter extremist ideas freely current in the British Muslim community.
Aikman on the New Atheism
Thu 10 Jul 2008 • Responses: 3 • by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow David Aikman, who is also Professor of History at Patrick Henry College, spoke in February for the college’s “Faith and Reason” lecture series on the “New Atheism” of writers including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
A press release, with links to the transcript of the text (PDF) and a free MP3 recording of the lecture, is on the college web site.
The lecture, “Weaknesses of the New Atheism,” anticipates arguments in Dr. Aikman’s new book, The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, and will be a good introduction to that volume for people considering its purchase.
No Place to Call Home
Sun 29 Jun 2008 by Joseph Loconte
One of the most serious matters in religion is the issue of apostasy, that is, the act of renouncing one’s faith. Christianity has a long and troubled history with apostasy. For centuries the Catholic Church treated apostates—or those suspected of apostasy—as criminals worthy of persecution, imprisonment, and death. Protestants often took a similar line, especially when they found themselves in positions of political power.
Islam’s record of confrontation with apostates is no less oppressive and violent. The obvious difference, of course, is that much of the Muslim world continues to react to apostasy with fear, contempt, and violence.
Who’s a Dogmatist?
Wed 25 Jun 2008 by Joseph Loconte
Earlier this week the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released its second report on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. It suggests that although many Americans consider themselves highly religious, most are not “dogmatic” in their approach to faith—at least, they’re not dogmatic as some pollsters define dogmatism. According to the Pew survey, about 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions—not just their own—can lead to eternal life. Most believe that the teachings of their own faith can be interpreted in various ways. Pew Forum director Luis Lugo summarized the results this way:
“The fact that most Americans are not exclusive or dogmatic about their religion is a fascinating finding. Most people will be surprised that a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including a majority of evangelical Protestants, say that there isn’t just one way to salvation or to interpret the teachings of their own faith.”
Dear Kid: Die Now. Thanks, The Planet
Thu 19 Jun 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Mark Meador
Over at On the Square, the blog from First Things, they have shared a post by Wesley J. Smith on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Planet Slayer” section of their website. The site, aimed at children with its cartoon characters and simple language, purports to “educate” them about greenhouse gases and our effect on the environment through the way we live.
But as Smith points out, their real intent becomes disturbingly clear when you click on “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator.” This fun little application for kids asks you questions about your lifestyle and spending habits, does some calculation in the background, and then tells you when you should die. The idea is that you have used up your allotted tons of CO2 and should die now to save the planet.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Supernatural
Thu 19 Jun 2008 by David Aikman
Despite Lucas’s New Age leanings, he firmly sides with traditionalists in the view that ancient religious artifacts of traditional religions contain real powers that should not be tampered with by human beings.
Warning: This commentary contains spoilers for the latest film.
After nineteen years of absence from movie screens around the world, the re-appearance of Indiana Jones in a new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was accompanied by security precautions worthy of a new Pentagon weapons project. Movie extras were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the content of the movie, and one actor was allowed just a few hours to read the script in London prior to contract-signing before a courier flew it back to Los Angeles to re-deposit it in a safe. In Los Angeles, in a police sting operation, a man was arrested for trying to sell production photographs that he had allegedly stolen from the offices of producer George Lucas.
