In 1979, a class on transcendental meditation was banned from New Jersey public schools on the grounds that it violated the separation between church and state. Today, transcendental meditation is making a comeback, supported by stars including filmmaker David Lynch and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney.

“Slowly but steadily, TM seems to be gaining a foothold in public schools across the country,” Church & State magazine reports. No matter how you package the practice, Church & State asserts that transcendental meditation is rooted in Hinduism, and any classes taught in public schools would violate the first amendment. The article quotes one angry parent who called the practice a “cult.”

Adherents, according to Church & State, are “promoting the program as the solution for everything from poor academic performance and fidgety kids to unruly student behavior and gang violence.”

David Lynch, in an article for Utne Reader, gave people this advice on the benefits of meditation: “Grow in happiness and intuition. Experience the joy of doing. And you'll glow in this peaceful way. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money!”

Image by Kanzeon Zen Center, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Sources:  Church & State ,  Utne Reader  

Pundits continue to wrestle over the University of Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to speak at commencement, with a growing online petition against the visit, outrage from the likes of Newt Gingrich, and subsequent outrage at the outrage from liberals. Sometimes it’s hard to find a moderate voice between all the shouting back and forth, but J. Peter Nixon presents a restrained, thoughtful opinion over at Commonweal.

Nixon recognizes the politics involved in Notre Dame’s invitation:

“There was a time, of course, when Catholics were on the outside looking in at mainstream American society.  The fact that Notre Dame could entice a president to speak was a mark that we had arrived and were part of the mainstream.  Is that the message we want to send?  That the nation’s leading Catholic university has ‘bagged another one,’ so to speak?  Is our ability to attract the attention of the powerful a mark of our success as followers of Jesus Christ?”

And as for Obama, accepting the invitation signals “that at least some portion of the Catholic community is ‘okay’ with him.  I don’t blame him for this and it doesn’t particularly upset me.  This is what politicians do.” 

Nixon cops to voting for Obama in the election but remains openly conflicted on the president’s positions on stem cell research and abortion:

“I was ‘okay’ enough with Obama to support him last year, given the choices I had,” Nixon writes. “But it was always a ‘two-and-a-half cheers’ kind of thing.  I couldn’t forget–and didn’t want to forget–that there was an entire class of human beings that were outside his circle of moral concern.”

He concludes, “There is a difference between a hiring decision–which is what I think a choice for president is–and holding someone up as a person to be emulated.  When I think of the kind of commencement speaker I’d want students at a Catholic university to hear from, I’d be looking for someone a bit different.”

Source: Commonweal 

Image by Paul J Everett, licensed under Creative Commons

“Suppose you spent 1 million dollars every single day starting from the day Jesus was born, and kept spending through today…You would still have spent less money than Congress just spent.” This comparison opens an anti-stimulus package television ad launched today by the conservative American Issues Project.

By invoking Jesus’ name, the ad suggests that he too would have been opposed to the stimulus plan. It is jarring to think of Jesus—who wasn’t a huge proponent of storing up treasures on earth—spending one million dollars every single day. (Are we to assume that Jesus would have spent nearly all of one day’s million-dollar allowance on this ad?)

What’s odd is that the ad says nothing substantive about Jesus’ views on money. Instead, it manipulates people by referencing Jesus in an ad that’s really about objections to economic policy; it’s a classic example of the unlikely marriage between fiscal conservatives and conservative Christians.

It’s hard to know whether or not the stimulus package will work, let alone what Jesus would have thought of it.

Maybe he would have said something like, “Sell all you possess and distribute it to the poor,” or “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Or he could have looked to Jerusalem’s history for past leaders’ responses to crises. Like when King Jehoash hired carpenters and masons to repair the temple after a period of civil turmoil, or when Nehemiah ended exploitative lending practices and returned peoples’ mortgaged land to them during a famine.

The Vatican recently launched a YouTube channel so that "[the Catholic Church] is not a stranger to those spaces where numerous young people search for answers and meaning in their lives." So far, the channel includes papal press releases and video excerpts of Holy Mass. If you'd like to watch Pope Benedict VXI announce the Vatican's leap into the Internet age, you'll have to follow the link to YouTube; the embedding codes that allow reposting YouTube videos on other websites have been "disabled by request."

HBO chose not to include Bishop Gene Robinson’s invocation in its broadcast of Sunday’s inaugural festivities, but Sarah Pulliam of Christianity Today taped the prayer for those who might like to see it.

Episcopal Café has compiled several religion writers’ thoughts on why Robinson’s prayer was not televised.

The city of Edmond, Oklahoma, recently offered to pay for half of a sculpture that looks suspiciously like Jesus and is titled, “Come Unto Me,” the Associated Press reports. The 26-inch bronze sculpture by Rosalind Cook, which shows a familiar-looking bearded man in a robe and sandals talking to children, is to be placed outside a Catholic gift shop whose owner raised the funds to pay the other half of the statue’s $7800 price tag. Speaking to the AP, June Cartwright of the Edmond Visual Arts Commission said, “It doesn't state that it is specifically Jesus. It is whatever you perceive it to be.”

The claim might be slightly disingenuous, considering the artist identified the sculpture as one of Jesus on her website.

After an outcry led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the mayor of Edmond announced that the city would not go through with the deal, and that the sculpture would be paid for by private funding.

The controversy lasted only a few days, but it's just one of many instances where the city of Edmond has tried to muddle the line between church and state. In 1996, Edmond lost a Supreme Court battle to keep a cross in the city seal. Last year, city officials were forced to back down from their decision to use over $8000 in public funds to put a statue of Moses outside a local church.

By refusing to renew an executive anti-discrimination order, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has paved the way for faith-based discrimination in the state, Sandhya Bathija writes for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. The order, issued by Jindal’s predecessor Gov. Kathleen Blanco, prohibited discrimination in government services, hiring, or business contracting on the basis of religion, disabilities, race, gender, political affiliation, and sexual orientation. Jindal maintains that such anti-discrimination measures and “additional categories of special rights” are unnecessary. Bathija insists that the governor’s so-called “common sense approach” opens the door for companies to discriminate in hiring and employee treatment. She writes that Jindal is merely “catering yet again to his Religious Right friends at the Louisiana Family Forum… a group that seeks to ‘persuasively present biblical principles’ in political and other issues.” 

Photo by  KitAy , licensed under  Creative Commons .