Recently in Matters of faith Category

I'm launching my new book about the so-called clash-of-civilizations Wednesday night at USC. Info on the event is here, and parking info is here. We'll have some copies of the book available for sale, and I'll be around to sign them after my chat with USC religious life dean Varun Soni. Come join us if you can!

My ruminations about the intersection of religion and politics have caused quite a ruckus among many people. What I find fascinating is a particular division among Christians: conservative Christians find my stuff to be awful and misguided, while liberal & progressive Christians find it to be exhilarating and eye-opening. Go figure. What's even more interesting is that I once sided with the conservatives in hating the kind of person that I am now.

But if you're going to read one book relating to my spiritual processings, I'd rather you read this one, by the Rev. Greg Boyd.

In it, Boyd offers precisely the sort of Biblical evidence that some readers here are demanding regarding the contention that the current conservative mix of faith & politics constitutes a kind of flag-waving idolatry. He uses Pauline theology skillfully to dismantle notions that any country can find "favor" in the eyes of the Lord within a world which Paul says is ruled by sin. If you're a conservative who can read this and not be challenged or even changed, you're spiritually and intellectually dead.

Many of my evangelical friends are disappointed with how I drifted from the Church, after spending all those years studying Calvin, Luther, Barth, Brunner, Schleiermacher, Yancey, Nouwen, Lewis, Merton and countless others.

I tell them that if there were more guys like Boyd, I'd be serving communion with them this Sunday. But the fact that there aren't many guys like this does have an impact on what I see God in heaven up to, as it relates to evangelicals.

This stuff is all so deeply personal, I know it is. I know some friends feel I'm being uncharitable in how I assess Christians and how I'm so outraged by the "rightwing clump" that I see in my imagination. I myself spent 15 years saying, "These folks aren't the real Christians"... and finally I decided, "Actually, maybe they are the real Christians, and the rest of us are the imposters...."

But as for Mr. Newland on this board, I find it interesting that he believes the Roman Catholic Church is the one true authority on Christian faith, when his last two popes have taken a sharply different view of politics than he does. Cafeteria Catholicism strikes again...?

My thanks for Mariel G. for running this new piece adapted from my new book.

My new book is finally here, and it's available right over here. I'll share more information about it in coming days. But in a nutshell, it discusses my background in both conservative Islam and conservative Christianity--with an eye on how both religions have been compromised by their roles within contemporary politics and nationalism.

I don't have as strong opinions about Pope Pius XII as does Gail or many devout Catholics or Jews.

But I always respected Newsweek's old religion writer, Kenneth Woodward, and he wrote a decade ago a fascinating defense of the wartime pope, here. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on it.

I was in the Midwest yesterday, speaking to a college group about tensions between Muslims and the West, and I argued that Muslims in the U.S. tend to assimilate much more fully than in Europe. A short while later I heard about Nidal Malik Hasan at Ft. Hood. I felt horrified, angered and embarrassed.

Although I come from a Muslim background, I don't pretend to represent Islam, but I care deeply about Muslim family and friends who seek to balance their faith and their love for America. Ft. Hood mocks such attempts at balance.

A few years back, my brother and I penned a piece criticizing xenophobia directed at Muslim-Americans, but we still made it a point to argue that Muslim advocacy organizations such as CAIR "should go further [than just condemning violence], perhaps by establishing philanthropies for communities and families hurt by extremists who have hijacked Islam."

Maybe these groups can begin to put their money where their mouth is, by offering tangible support to families of the shooting victims. Some of those families may angrily reject such aid, because Hasan's act will aggravate latent xenophobia. But still, a steadfast and long-term commitment to such a healing approach represents the generous model of Muhammad at the height of his powers.

I'm touched by Gail-Tz's story about Michael Weisser and Larry Tripp, and I believe it's essential to counter the Furrows of the world.

There is an incredible amount of hatred today in the air, born of the excruciating economic and societal uncertainties of our times, and I don't think we make much headway by shaming those who think and talk and act shamefully.

Sometimes we get pulled into pointless but vicious debates about "which side" is more guilty of hate, and why we're justified in, well, hating those whom we believe hate us even more. It not only derails our efforts to become better as individuals and as a society, it accelerates us down a cliff.

The Weisser way is, with apologies for punnery, the wiser way.

Just as necessity is the mother of invention, the fear of death is the mother of religion, of the quest for transcendence and the hope of immortality. Death makes us wildly irrational. Death, especially an untimely passing, is what turns ordinary and flawed people into martyrs and what turns ordinary and flawed politicians into enduring legends. Death makes hard people soft, death makes people ashamed to remember past sins and slights by the deceased, death makes every one of its victims stand larger in our memories as being bigger and better than they were. Death makes us lose all perspective -- and in so doing, death reveals much about us as poor, fearful, mortal creatures. In a week in which we are thinking much about the deaths of famous persons, that is all I will say about death.

Social conservatives will soon tire of liberals' snickering about the latest true confessions of philandering GOP would-be presidential candidates. I think the larger problem for the conservative faithful is that they've gleefully led a divisive culture war in recent decades, condemning media and universities for warping the values of the mainstream. So I don't think they convince others when they then blame innate human weakness for their own foibles; they'd been arguing that their way is better and healthier. If they're going to maintain that position, it would be more credible if they focused less on cultural street fights and moralizing on Fox News, which then leads to a loss of credibility when "life happens."

I was having dinner with a morally conservative couple a few years back, when the wife joked about how her husband was eyeing a fetching waitress -- prompting him to bellow, "How dare you?!?!" She withered, as did our evening. I realized he was outraged by the insinuation of "wrongdoing," but he seemed too defensive.

Now Todd and Sarah Palin, the parents of at least one sexually active teen who snubbed their moral teachings, are outraged that a talk-show host would poke fun of the Palins for having family problems. That's Letterman -- always irreverent and rude, regularly poking fun of Bill Clinton for being a slut long before even Monica-gate. Like it or don't, but the indignance is tiresome. The Palin teens are not "off limits," given how the McCain campaign exploited them. At last, Levi Johnston's assessment of the Palin parents indicates they're a bigger threat to the maintenance of conservative values than Letterman is.