And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

—Genesis 1:26

Giving humans dominion over the all creatures of the earth may not have been God’s best decision. The current state of the ecosystem would seem to indicate that we haven’t done a great job with it. The view that earth is there for humans to use and abuse is all too common according to Tony Woodleif writing for World on the Web, “especially if our theology tells us that God will soon whisk us away to a better place.”

A shift in that theology is already underway. Spirituality and a respect for the earth would seem like a natural fit, and plenty of ink has been spilled about the growing connection between religion and environmentalism.

That connection is being strained, however, by a mistrust on both sides. Religion may instill a sense of superiority over the natural world, but environmentalists are threatening to alienate spirituality with an “unbridled materialism,” Ross Robertson writes for What Is Enlightenment. All the new cool, new eco-friendly gadgets and technology are integrating environmentalism with progress and the economy, but many in the movement are over-emphasizing materialism to the determent of spirituality.

What is needed, according to Chris Dodge in the latest issue of Utne Reader, is a “new, healthy land ethic,” inspired by the conservationist Aldo Leopold. Dodge never mentions an overt spiritual bend in his piece, opting instead for 13 concrete suggestions on how people can reconnect with the earth. Some are as simple as “sleep on it,” encouraging people to camp outside every once in a while.

Rather than a sense of dominion, thinkers like Leopold encouraged “an obligation to care for land and that goes beyond seeing it as private property,” Dr. Cheryl J. Fish writes for Busted Halo. Since everyone has the ability sleep outside sometimes, the land ethic alienates neither the eco-technophiles nor the more spiritual members of the environmental movement. Instead, it instills a sense of connection to the earth, which in some ways, is what environmentalism is all about.

As the divide between believer and nonbeliever grows larger, science has become a weapon used by both sides. An article from New Scientist cites the evolution of the human brain as evidence that the world’s religions are products of human imagination. Maurice Bloch, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, argues that belief in a divine being emerged between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, coinciding with the human capacity to imagine.

 —Morgan Winters

When most people talk about the “separation of church and state,” the idea is to protect the state from the church. People work hard to keep “Intelligent Design” out of the public schools, believing that public life is already too religious. This may be true, but Steven Goldberg argues in the book Bleached Faith, that it’s religion that needs protection from the influence of public life.

“It is a sign of weakness—an admission that religion needs artificial life support—to push religious symbols into the smothering embrace of government,” Goldberg writes in the introduction to his book. Intelligent design in the classroom, over-sized menorahs in public buildings, and the Ten Commandments—dubbed by Goldberg as the “Nike Swoosh of religion”—in the courts don’t strengthen faith. Forcing religious imagery into public life actually cheapens religion and spirituality.

“The strength of real religion in America today is not undercut by the limits on government-supported religion in public settings,” Goldberg argues. Though many groups continue to test those limits. Writing for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Rob Boston breaks down “a laundry list” of organizations with clear religious motives that are receiving big money from the federal government. Teen Challenge, for example, is a drug prevention program that works by “applying biblical principles and establishing a chemical free lifestyle.” The organization was recently granted $587,514 in federal money, in part to work inside of public schools.

Many in the religious community, however, understand that politics and religion don’t mix well. In a recent survey by the National Association of Evangelicals, the vast majority of evangelical leaders came out unequivocally opposed to using their churches to endorse candidates. One university president put the issue in stark terms saying, “the pulpit is not the place for electioneering.”

—Bennett Gordon

Image by Chris Phan, licensed under Creative Commons.

Albert Einstein once said insanity is going to the same conferences over and over and expecting a different result. Or at least he said something to that effect. The National Conference of American Atheists, held recently in Minneapolis, could fit neatly within this maxim, except for one thing: the audience was overwhelmingly, unexpectedly young. When the commencement speaker asked all students to stand, close to a quarter of the seats in the hotel ballroom emptied. Two high school kids sitting against the back wall (free from school in honor of Good Friday, ironically) were so animated that they would have fit in better at a hip hop show than a conference.

Many of the speakers boasted about the large turnout of young people, pointing to a recent Pew report that suggests a growing trend of skepticism toward religion in people under 50. Among the 10-plus speakers, however, only two seemed intent on engaging the younger members of the audience. One, predictably, was scientist and author Richard Dawkins, whose eloquent and erudite manner is overshadowed only by the rationality of his oratory. Dawkins is a go-to guy for atheist talking points, and there was plenty of furious note taking in the audience during his presentation, presumably to stockpile ammunition for future debates. The other was physicist Lawrence Krauss, whose lecture on dark matter and energy was informative and surprisingly accessible to the clueless layperson.

Though widely different in focus, Dawkins’ and Krauss’ presentations had one central similarity: a simplicity of argument. Simplicity is the basis of atheism, and it’s also what many rational thinkers find appealing. There is no room for ritualistic mystery in atheism. It is adherent to the laws of nature and humanism, nothing more. To atheists, the mystery of the universe is not a testament to the power of a god, but a thing to be studied and ultimately unlocked.  

Unfortunately, this simplicity was lost on most of the speakers, who were more intent on pointing out the flaws in religion than they were in making a case for the inherent rationality of atheism. The defensive vitriol leveled at the religious powers-that-be effectively muddied the waters. Using atheism as a takedown of religion makes basic belief systems complicated. It is difficult to address the many failings of the world’s religions without entering the labyrinthine, incense-scented halls of ancient mythology. Going down that road serves only to add to the confusion of people unfamiliar with what atheism really is, exacerbating the misled belief that it is a cult or a religion. In fact, atheism is the antithesis of such belief-oriented groups. Next year’s conference would do well to scrap the bathetic victimhood and pointless navel-gazing, and concentrate on nabbing more speakers like Dawkins and Krauss.  

—Morgan Winters

Pundits of all political stripes have pondered the effect that religion is currently having in the world, and what that means for the future of the planet. The rise of radical Islam has right-wing commentators up in arms, while the popularity of evangelical mega-churches in the United States has caused plenty of hand wringing on the left.

The fears of both sides are unfounded, according to Alan Wolfe, writing for the Atlantic. “Most of the religious revivals we are seeing throughout the world today complement, and ultimately reinforce, secular developments,” Wolfe writes. “They are more likely to encourage moderation than fanaticism.”

Taking a page from the playbooks of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, Wolfe writes that material wealth makes people less religious. As countries get rich, their citizens will turn away from religion. The United States would seem to disprove that rule, since its citizens are both religious and wealthy, but Wolfe discounts that, calling American religiosity, “as shallow as it is broad.” Also, the current popularity of American evangelicalism, according to Wolfe, is owed in part to the religion’s embrace of secular values and lifestyles.

Throughout the world, Wolfe writes that “religious peace will be the single most important consequence of the secular underpinning of today’s religious growth.”

Not everyone, however, shares Wolfe’s optimistic vision of the future. Philip Jenkins writes for the New Republic (subscription required) that the looming crisis in climate change will exacerbate preexisting religious tensions throughout the world. In the future, as crops wither and icecaps melt, Jenkins warns that “ethnic cleansing in the name of resource protection” may become the norm.

On the other hand, climate change could lead to greater cooperation between people, Cynthia G. Wagner writes for the Futurist. Wagner acknowledges the probability that global warming could lead to conflicts, but also posits that the coming ecological crisis could lead to “economic change, trade, technological and social innovation, and peaceful resource distribution,” rather than simple religious strife and fighting. God willing.

—Bennett Gordon

Image by naughton, licensed under Creative Commons.

Some religious institutions have been known to take a holier-than-thou attitude toward sex workers. Not Sister Mary Soledad Perpinan, profiled by Sara Friedman in the online magazine Religion Dispatches. Known as Sister Sol, the 70-year-old nun displays a “undeviating long-term commitment to prostitutes, mail-order brides, incest survivors, dancers, bar girls and other exploited women,” writes Friedman. The writer wonders how this radical has managed to escape the ire of the church, but Sister Sol explains it saying, “The key is that they see I am doing what Christ would be doing.”

—Bennett Gordon

Colleges and universities are often thought of as godless institutions of secular thought and anti-religious sympathies, where Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx are taught and religious thinkers are ignored. That may have been true for the past 50 years, but higher education is changing, and may be accepting religion and spirituality as integral parts of learning.

“Marginalized for the better part of a century, the study of religion is making a comeback in American higher education,” John Schmalzbauer and Kathleen A. Mahoney write for Contexts (excerpt only available online). Prominent thinkers including Cornel West, Harold Bloom, Toni Morrison, and Stanley Fish have all explored the idea of the sacred in their academic careers.

Some scholars have begun to incorporate religious thinking into their study, others are taking a “spiritual-but-not-religious” approach to learning, and still others are studying religion from an objective, non-theological perspective. All of these modes of thought, Schmalzbauer and Mahoney content, are aspects of the same multifaceted movement giving religion greater representation in the realm of academia.

—Bennett Gordon

Photo by Tom Godber, licensed under Creative Commons.

There are many prayers to help mourn the death of a family member. In Judaism, the Mourner’s Kaddish gives people the opportunity to publicly express their grief over death. When coping with mental illness, the appropriate prayer is much harder to find. "Judaism does not give us a way of understanding and speaking about mental illness," Ayelet Amittay writes for Tikkun. Amittay’s father has not died physically, but she still feels that she has lost him to mental illness. Instead of a prayer for the dead, or a prayer for health that she knows will never come, Amittay struggles with her “need for a prayer that would redeem other kinds of losses—living losses.”

—Bennett Gordon

After seven years of existence, the irreverent spirituality website Killing the Buddha has ceased to be. Founded by Harper’s Magazine contributing editor Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau, and Jeremy Brothers, the website won an Utne Independent Press Award in 2002 for Online Cultural Coverage. Described as a “religion magazine for people made anxious by churches,” Killing the Buddha published funny and highly personal essays including, “A Slut for Faith” “Gods and Guitars” and “Pushing Monks” (written about by Nick Rose for Utne.com in 2006 ). The website’s independent voices and perspectives, not attached to any religion or faith, undoubtedly will be missed.

—Bennett Gordon

Mac: Hello, I’m a Mac.
PC: And, I’m a PC.
Mac: You worship false idols.
PC: Mine is the one true faith.

Given the messiah-like reception that Apple’s iPhone has received, technology could be “the new frontier of religious warfare,” according to an article by David Gibson in Science & Spirit.

—Bennett Gordon

While many faith-based responses to antireligious rants by Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great), Sam Harris (The End of Faith), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), et al. have been published, some of the more interesting critiques have come from fellow atheists. Theodore Dalrymple—an atheist and a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute—has a lively and thoughtful piece in the institute’s City Journal.

Dalrymple’s basic, but crucial observation is that this latest spate of antireligious book lack originality. “[They] imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat,” he writes. “They advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14.”

The piece also criticizes these writers’ deeply condescending attitudes toward people of faith, as well as their selective use of evidence in support of a foregone conclusion (“First you decide what you hate, and then you gather evidence for its hatefulness”).

Dalrymple is at his best when challenging the new atheists on their own intellectual consistency, questioning, for instance, Dawkins’ wisdom in suggesting “a new set of Ten Commandments for atheists…without considering odd the idea that atheists require commandments at all, let alone precisely ten of them.”

At times, the prose is as self-important as, well . . . Christopher Hitchens. And there’s enough gratuitous name-dropping to make even a young graduate student blush. Still, it’s a sharply written and argued piece.

See also the Berlin weekly Jungleworld’s interview with Mitchell Cohen—reprinted in Dissent­—in which Cohen, another atheist, offers some useful context for the debate. —Steve Thorngate