TTF Staff
Trinity Forum founder and Moderator Os Guinness has published a review of a new book on religion and politics worldwide in the Spring 2005 issue of The Wilson Quarterly.
Discussing Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. Dr. Guinness welcomes their contribution to the research and understanding of religion in public life but suggests that their approach contains a fundamental weakness. Two clips follow.
The weight of all the data, interestingly, points somewhere between the extremes of the debate. Religion is far from dead, and it certainly hasn’t disappeared—even in Europe, where the evidence for its demise is most powerful. But there is strong evidence that it has lost its decisive authority over the lives of adherents in the developed world—even in the United States, where American exceptionalism has long defied European trends toward secularization.
And
What really ought to be addressed, however, are the implications of Norris and Inglehart’s findings for the Western democracies. They nowhere discuss religion as having more than a generic, functional role in assuring existential security. Such a view is inadequate for those who take the specific content of faith seriously, and who argue that faiths of a certain shape produce citizens of a certain shape, who in turn produce societies of a certain shape—in other words, that faith must be considered as a set of beliefs with particular consequences and not others.
Sightings, Public Square, Religious Liberty, Mon 06 Jun 2005
Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire
The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal, foreword by Os Guinness.
A Jewish concentration camp inmate is pulled from work detail at a makeshift hospital to listen to a dying Nazi soldier’s confession. The SS soldier asks him for forgiveness that he might die in peace. In the Jew’s place, what would have you have done?
Decoding the Language of Faith
Forgiving Enemies in Northern Ireland
President Obama’s Proposals for a Second Fiscal Stimulus: Senior Fellow Prabhu Guptara: “Is there anything short of divine miracles which will be good for job creation, good for the small business sector, good for the economy as a whole, and good for President Obama?” (Renaissance: Insights for Action in Today’s World • 2010 02 09)
How the Victoria and Albert Museum dealt with the dying of Christianity: “This situation is unprecedented in western civilisation: even 50 years ago, when these galleries of one of the richest collections in the world were last displayed in the V&A, they could assume that everyone was familiar with the rudiments of Christianity. Now, in a twinkling of an eye, 2,000 years of culture in the profoundest meaning of the word have been largely forgotten.” (Anna Somers Cocks, The Art Newspaper, December 2009 • 2010 01 05)
The God that Fails: David Brooks: “Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.” (New York Times, December 31, 2009 • 2010 01 05)
From Winchester to Westminster: Jonathan Aitken discusses Sir John Templeton recently in the American Spectator; here’s a quote from the late philanthropist on gratitude: “Thanksgiving opens the door to spiritual growth. If there is any day in our life which is not thanksgiving day, then we are not fully alive. Counting our blessing attracts blessings. Counting our blessings each morning starts a day full of blessings. Thanksgiving brings God’s bounty. From gratitude comes riches—from complaints, poverty. Thankfulness opens the door to happiness. Thanksgiving causes giving. Thanksgiving puts our mind in tune with the Infinite. Continual gratitude dissolves our worries.” (The American Spectator • 2009 09 11)
• Welcome, National Affairs (2009 09 08)
• Looking for an Honest Man (2009 09 08)
• Why AI is a dangerous dream (2009 09 08)
• Restoring the Fresco of Progress (2009 08 28)
• The Case for Working With Your Hands (2009 06 04)
The Celestial Rail-Road by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Foreword by Os Guinness.
This story addresses the question of the truth-claims of religious faith in the face of the pressures of the modern world.
