Spirit Scholars

Searching for Prophets in Troubled Times? A Flash of Wisdom Arrives 77 Years Later

Since Friday, we've received a number of Emails discussing John Dominic Crossan's provocative new book, "God and Empire." Click here to jump back and read our review, if you missed it.

First, we're proud to say that given the civil community we've gathered here at Spirit Scholars -- several Emailed comments have been critical of the very idea of this book -- and several Emails have been highly pleased with it. In fact, at least 2 readers have told us that they've already purchased copies of the book, since Friday!

Mostly, the critics seemed weary of such painful controversy. We won't name names here, but one note said, "I love a lot of things on this site ... (but) ... More inspiration. Less politics." Another note said, "We don't need one more theological critic ... like this, do we? People need faith."

On the other side of the spiritual-political aisle, people were happy that Crossan had drawn a bright line from the extremely challenging teachings of Jesus about the way our communities should behave -- and the tragic way that our world is behaving these days.

So, Thank You to all our readers -- Spirit Scholars is, at its core, an always-hopeful experiment in community -- as we share viewpoints from traditionalist church member to cutting-edge mystic about the role of religion in our world today.

And - this is a great opportunity to explain why Spirit Scholars occasionally mentions fascinating items we've spotted in the pages of The Atlantic. If you're not a regular reader of The Atlantic -- please, consider supporting that 150-year-old institution by subscribing. We've got fewer and fewer journalistic institutions like this left in the U.S. with each passing year.

One of the smartest things The Atlantic staff did in recent years was the decision to occasionally publish landmark articles from the Atlantic's long history in American letters.

A couple of years ago, the editors published an essay written 77 years ago by American theologian the Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr, who Michigan readers should immediately recognize as a one-time prominent Detroit pastor (his church was in the New Center area of Detroit).

In 1930, in the pages of The Atlantic, Niebuhr wrote an essay, called "Awkward Imperialists," which we think should be required reading in every course in American History and Political Science these days. Frankly, all John Dominic Crossan's new book has over Niebuhr's 1930 essay is that Crossan connects more of the analysis with recent historical insights into the life of Jesus himself. And Crossan's book, of course, is far longer -- and more specific about recent historical developments.

But The Point made by Niebuhr, in many ways, underlines the point made by Crossan. So, critics of Crossan? This kind of analysis has a long, proud tradition in American religious thought. And Crossan isn't the first one to reach such provocative conclusions.

You can find complete copies of this Niebuhr essay various places online. If you're a teacher or student, check with librarians and they can locate the entire text for you. But here are a few haunting excerpts of this lengthy essay. The following are just a few of Niebuhr's words:

Our … imperial power is administered with singular awkwardness. We hear of the rising tide of resentment against us with a mingled feeling of incredulity and injured innocence.  … We are a business people who know nothing about the intricacies of politics, especially international politics, and in the flush of youthful pride we make no calculations of the reactions to our attitudes in the minds of others. …

Our lack of imagination is increased by the fact that we have come into our position of authority too suddenly to adjust ourselves to its responsibilities and that we are geographically too isolated from the world to come into intimate contact with the thought of others. … We hold ourselves aloof from international councils because we feel ourselves too powerful to be in need of counseling with others, but we are able to practice the deception of imagining that our superior political virtue rather than our superior economic strength makes such abstention possible and advisable. …

We were cradled in Puritanism. Our prosperity has gradually dissipated the individual virtues of self-discipline which Puritanism once inculcated, but we are not yet rid of the Puritan vices, particularly the lack of social imagination. We have a Puritan penchant for oversimplifying moral and social problems. …

It has always been the habit of fortunate people to ascribe their luck or their fortune to their own moral qualities rather than to any inscrutability of history, and our fortune-favored nation has developed this habit with the greatest possible consistency. …

The fact is that our political naïvete betrays us into sentimentality, and sentimentality always looks like idealism from an inside perspective and like hypocrisy from an outside one. ...

But such evidence as is available certainly does not encourage the faith that we shall develop a political genius equal to the responsibilities thrust upon us by our imperial power.

A Prophetic New View of Jesus' Preaching that Slices to the Heart of our World

The good news, as ... seen from Jesus and Paul, is that the violent normalcy of human civilization is not the inevitable destiny of human nature. Christian faith and human evolution agree on that point. Since we invented civilization some 6,000 years ago along the irrigated floodplains of great rivers, we can also un-invent it -- we can create its alternative. In the challenge of Christian faith, we are called to cooperate in establishing the Kingdom of God in a transformed earth. In the challenge of human evolution, we are called to Post-Civilization, to imagine it, to create it, and to enjoy it on a transfigured earth.
(John Dominic Crossan in "God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now")

If this doesn't sound like your typical Bible-study book for general readers, that's because this culmination of Crossan's more than 20 volumes on biblical scholarship starts with a summary of the past -- but then quickly picks up speed and thrusts itself from the pages of the Bible 2,000 years forward into the heart of our contemporary world.

"God and Empire" reads as though, at age 73, Crossan is just hitting his stride.

One great argument that there are certain spiritual gifts that accompany the aging process can be found in recent books by Crossan and his close friend Marcus Borg. Both men seem to be continually distilling their decades of biblical scholarship to draw ever-more courageous and hopeful critiques of the contemporary world.

Borg's "Heart of Christianity" is frequently quoted from church pulpits these days for its optimistic assertion that the pure core of the 2,000-year-old faith is as relevant today as it ever was -- and for Borg's compassionate appeal to people who felt isolated from American expressions of Christianity to reconsider the true faith.

But, Borg didn't stop there. He went on to write his much more ambitious, "Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary." And, along the way, Borg and Crossan co-authored a shorter, easy-to-read guide to the end of Jesus' life, "The Last Week," a chapter-by-chapter examination of the final passages in the gospels.

Here at Spirit Scholars, we've made reference to all three books over the past year -- as have a host of pastors and other writers nationwide.

Now, as if Crossan wants to keep pace with his good friend, he is back in bookstores with his own "more ambitious" book, "God and Empire." As in Borg's recent book on "Jesus," Crossan summarizes his scholarly assumptions about the historical Jesus -- distilling much of the biblical scholarship he spread out in far greater detail in his earlier books.

But, like Borg's "Jesus," this is a book that's far more than history. In fact, Crossan's "God and Empire" is a provocative political manifesto, chiefly aimed at the range of evangelical Christianity that celebrates everything from Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" and the "Left Behind" series of novels to the pious proclamations of many supporters of President George W. Bush's foreign policy.

Before he finishes, Crossan even offers a several-page critique of C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia" that is likely to make Lewis lovers at least stop and think twice about why we enjoy these novels so much. We're not saying we agree with him completely -- especially on Lewis -- but Crossan is raising a prophetic series of arguments that are fascinating and helpful to consider.

If you're looking for a study-book, say, for an adult-education program in your parish, we can guarantee you one thing: Readers will have a whole lot to say about a lot of passages in this book. In fact, as much as we've demonstrated ourselves, here at Spirit Scholars, to be appreciative readers of Crossan-Borg's work, we'll admit that we've got a few passages in "God and Empire" that leave us wanting to talk over a few things with the author, come to think of it!

So, we heartily recommend "God and Empire." Mired as we are -- as a nation -- in the seemingly endless mists of war, shouldn't we -- as people who care deeply about faith -- examine the ways our culture and our political leaders manipulate God to shape our American responses to the world?

To give you an even better feel for some of Crossan's arguments -- here's another short passage toward the end of the book in which he examines the biblical context of empire and the modern one as well. He writes:

"I have spent the last 35 years thinking about early Christianity -- from the historical Jesus, through the birth of Christianity, and on to the apostle Paul -- and attempting to live within its visionary program for our world. Earliest Christianity arose within the Old Roman Empire, and America, we are told, is the New Roman Empire. Three questions are then obvious for anyone who is both Christian and American today:

"How is it possible to be a faithful Christian in the American Empire?

"How is it possible to be a nonviolent Christian within a violent Christianity based on a violent Christian Bible?

"How is it possible to be a faithful Christian in an American Empire facilitated by a violent Christian Bible?"

Intrigued? Infuriated? Interested in reading this new book for yourself? Well, we've got a mini-review in the right margin of this Web site. Click on the title of the book, you'll jump to Amazon -- and you can order a copy right now.

An Inspiration from Waaaaaay Up North about Designs for Eco-Theology

UPDATE on the Earth Keepers' creative campaign to collect unused and out-dated pharmaceutical waste across Michigan's Upper Peninsula: Once again, Earth Keepers and a broad array of partnering groups and congregations pulled off a wonderful demonstration of what's possible with this kind of careful planning.

Here's an excerpt from the various press reports circulating across the Midwest this week: People turned in more that a ton of unwanted pills, powders, and liquid medicines - including an estimated $500,000 worth of narcotics - during the Earth Day collection. The annual Earth Keepers Clean Sweep focused this year on these kind of drugs that are typically just flushed down the toilet and into our waterways. About 2,000 people showed up. Many had gotten castoff medicines from relatives and friends as well as their own cabinets. ... Studies have detected traces of pharmaceuticals such as birth control hormones, antidepressants, and antibiotics in waterways downstream from wastewater treatment plants.

CLICK HERE to jump to an area of Earth Keepers' own Web site -- where, among other things, they've got a very helpful Fact Sheet that you can download and print out on safely getting rid of such waste.

AND ... to learn more about this cutting-edge partnership in Eco-Theology, Read On for our original story ...

Folks in Michigan's Upper Peninsula like to joke that their land waaaaay up North is at least closer to God's country. And the innovative partnership between one of the state's leading ecological groups and a relatively new interfaith coalition is suggesting that they've at least found some very creative ideas about what God wants them to do.

Over this past weekend, another annual Earth Day collection was held across the UP -- an event that's deliberately designed each year to combine spiritual creativity with ecological awareness. Two years ago, this partnership focused on hazardous household waste like old paint and household cleaners. Last year, they set records for collecting household electronic gear -- 320 tons of it overall! (The photo in upper right is from last year's collection, taken by one of the partnership's chief spokespeople, Greg Peterson.)

This past weekend, the Upper Peninsula partnership focused on pharmaceutical waste -- unused medicines cluttering up the bathroom and kitchen shelves of thousands of families. The design of this collection was a model for other regions. The Environmental Protection Agency was involved as well as a wide array of law-enforcement agencies and pharmacists, who volunteered to make sure the waste was properly handled and destroyed. (Police were involved because some of the drugs tossed away were controlled substances and reports we've heard from this effort suggest that all of the agencies involved were extremely helpful.)

Congregations, seminaries and other religious groups across the U.S. are looking for creative ideas to take serious action on Eco-Theology. Not a week goes by that we don't hear a new report of someone trying to address these global issues.

Well, the UP partnership in Michigan seems to be writing a textbook of creative ideas. Click Here to jump to an Our Spirit story that describes the project and shares voices from a number of participants.

Celebrating a World of Culture Preserved in Yiddish Language and Arts

A three-day international conference on the importance of Yiddish began on Sunday April 22 and runs through Tuesday April 24 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. From the fine arts to literature, from sociology to history, scholars will examine the significance of Yiddish in talks and panel discussions during the conference, organized by the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.

Here at Spirit Scholars, we want to celebrate and encourage efforts like this Frankel Center conference. We're told that we can expect more public events like this from the Center over the next few years, so stay tuned.

If you'd like to know more about the conference -- as well as the subject of Yiddish in general -- Click Here to jump to the Detroit Free Press Web site and read more. And, there also was a second story on  Sunday -- about an effort to preserve 100-year-old musical comedy numbers written by Jewish composers. Click Here to jump to that second story.

If this subject intrigues you and you'd care to "Read More" than what's in the newspaper about this subject, then here are a few more cool places to visit:

First, Click Here to jump to a Web page that explains the archival CD, called "Jewface" that was created by Slate-dot-com Music Critic Jody Rosen and a group of artists and scholars to preserve these 100-year-old novelty numbers. The title of the CD sounds crazy, but there's serious scholarship behind the effort. You may have heard Rosen interviewed on National Public Radio in recent months.

If you visit the Web page devoted to the CD, you can hear a musical clip from the CD and you also can listen to an audio file of Rosen talking about the project.

The image at right is the cover to the sheet music for "I'm a Yiddish Cowboy," written in 1908, a classic fish-out-of-water comedy number. In this case, a heroic New York Jewish guy, who calls himself "Tough Guy Levi," manages to succeed despite steep odds in the Wild West. It's the same basic gag that comedian Billy Crystal used in his 1991 hit movie, "City Slickers." Jody Rosen found an Edison wax-cylinder recording of the Cowboy song and included it on his archival CD.

Want to know more about the cutting-edge group that sponsored Rosen's production of this archival CD? Well, Click Here to jump to the Rebooters home page. There's a conscious effort in this group's creative projects to push buttons in their potential audience -- sometimes to outrageous extremes. But, before you complain, look more carefully at the folks behind this effort and you'll see there's artistic method to what may seem like craziness. Click on the About Us Link on that home page to check out the entire creative team behind Rebooters.

Eager for more Yiddish information? Well, we found one fascinating attempt at an online, interactive Yiddish dictionary. It looks like a labor of love by a small group of people -- so there are plenty of flaws in the software -- but it's fun to play around with the site. There are options for typing in English words to get Yiddish translations. You also can enter Yiddish terms spelled in English characters -- to find out their meanings. We can't verify the overall accuracy of this site, but it's fascinating to explore. Click here to jump there now.

Curious about the Frankel Center in Ann Arbor? Well, Click Here to read a UofM-published news story in 2005 about the $20 million gift that got this remarkable center for scholarship moving along at a whole new international level.

Then, of course, the Frankel Center has its own portion of the UofM Web site to describe its ongoing projects. Click Here to jump to the Frankel Center's home page. To read more about the conference this week that's focused on Yiddish, click on the link on the right-hand side of that page. A word of warning for Web surfers with slower connection speeds -- choose the "basic" information link if you don't have broadband. The other link downloads a large file that displays the conference's colorful, printed brochure.

Detroit Free Press Religion Writer David Crumm Presents an Illustrated Talk

At 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 25, Kirk in the Hills is hosting an evening with Detroit Free Press Religion Writer (and Spirit Scholars Editor) David Crumm.

The talk is part of the Kirk's popular "Christ and Culture: Crucial Conversations" series that has brought other speakers to this historic Oakland County Presbyterian church.

Crumm's talk is titled: "Media 24/7: Swimming Toward the Sacred in a Sea of Sights and Sounds"

Here's a summary of the themes that evening:

Our faith says that God is everywhere, but so is media—showering us constantly in the forms of newspapers, magazines, cable TV, I-Pods, digital telephones and the Internet. Our faith is about communication and connection; and so is media.

But faith and media certainly aren’t the same thing, are they? How do we learn to swim in this sea of sights and sounds – while keeping our eyes open for the sacred?

This illustrated talk will explore the challenges of seeing the world through the eyes of faith. Our own scriptural tradition describes Creation itself as embodied in a “Word” – so communication is a divine attribute. But let’s be honest! Media, these days, is also an annoyance! We easily become overloaded with manipulative messages and lose the clarity of our vision.

After two millennia, we still see through a glass darkly most of the time.

Crumm will talk about this challenge and also will offer some creative examples from the realm of media that illustrate the difficulty of discernment – and some high hopes for the future.  Then, he’ll open up this theme even further by inviting questions.

Admission is free and open to the public. 

For more information, please contact Lana Russell at (248) 626-2515 ext. 127 or revler@kirkinthehills.org.

If you're online, CLICK HERE to jump to the Kirk's "Map and Directions" page. Once you're there, you also can explore the Kirk's other programs or read about the Kirk's remarkable history.

CROWDSOURCING RELIGION: A Quick Guide to What It Means and Where to Read More

UPDATE on May 6, 2007: We've added The First Draft of the Open Source Religion project, now underway through June 1, in a cutting-edge online project co-sponsored by Wired Magazine, New York University School of Journalism, the Detroit Free Press and Spirit Scholars. Click here to read that "Story Thus Far No. 1" from this innovative online project. OR, right here is the overview of "Crowdsourcing Religion" that will orient you to this emerging issue ...

The juggernaut had been picking up steam for years.

The "Crowdsourcing" label that Wired Magazine's Jeff Howe slapped onto the cultural juggernaut in the June 2006 issue of Wired stuck there with an earth-rumbling impact, not because Wired was driving this immense cultural change -- but because Howe and the Wired crew had conveniently given us a verbal handle to name and more properly connect this global movement with a host of other trends. (In the upper right is a copy of the original Wired illustration. Click on any of the images in Spirit Scholars to see them enlarge.)

In a nutshell, the trend involves "the rise of the amateur," but more importantly -- the rise of personal expression as a global birthright, rather than a rare talent. Some years ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman grabbed one of the earliest pieces of this reporting with his phrase "Super-empowered individuals." But what Friedman didn't quite see was that it's far more than individuals who want to claim this right. It's ALL OF US, now.

The "Crowdsourcing" phrase is a positive way to grab hold of the earthquake's energy and -- to borrow a phrase from another innovative thinker in this field (the Rev. Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church in Granville, Michigan) -- dare "to focus its energy like a laser beam." It remains to be seen whether anyone can achieve that feat -- although a number of religious innovators like Bell seem to be doing an impressive job of it.

In the pages of the Detroit Free Press, Religion Writer David Crumm had been exploring the same juggernaut that Jeff Howe identified in Wired -- the rise of the amateur -- from other perspectives. For instance, he's chronicled the rise of Bell and Mars Hill.

But, Crumm has been deeply involved in Crowdsourcing Religion himself, ever since a 2001-2002 senior journalists' fellowship at the University of Michigan, a year of advanced study in ethnography, global culture and media. In the summer of 2003, Crumm launched the Detroit Free Press' Our Spirit column, a weekly interactive look at Americans' everyday spiritual insights -- complete with weekly opportunities for readers to weigh into the discussion. In the fall of 2005, he founded a nonprofit film group called Divine Light Pictures that teaches high school students how to create documentary films about religious diversity -- a prize-winning project that's detailed in other Spirit Scholars stories.

On June 25, 2004, the Free Press touched off a huge buzz among readers with a landmark Our Spirit story about the cutting edge of individual spirituality that's thriving far beyond the typical realms of religious reflection. The story was headlined: "Seeking Spirituality in the House of Java: Starbuck's Coffee Shops Offer Place for Urban Pilgrims to Reflect" (And, if you'd like to read that original piece, we've dug up a copy from the archives and a text-only version can be found via the link at the bottom of this article.)

That led to Crumm's commission to write the concluding chapter in the Baylor University Press book, released in November 2004, under the overall headline, "Quoting God: How Media Shape Ideas About Religion and Culture." Crumm's assignment, for the end of the book, was to explore "emerging religious landscapes" and he took a team of researchers back to Starbuck's, but also to the aisles of Borders and Target to discover that those retailers already were making a nice profit on Americans' love of what we're now calling open-source religion. (To read the book, you'll have to buy a copy -- but there's a link to it in the right-hand margin of our Web site. Click on the title to jump to Amazon and pick up a copy.)

Also in the fall of 2004, Crumm and photographer John Hile hit the road in a month-long odyssey to cross the U.S. on back roads from California to the Midwest, charting this spiritual shift in the lives of everyday Americans. They visited the troubled Owens Valley in central California (the site of water wars and a WWII Japanese interment camp), as well as conservative eastern Kansas, the plains of Colorado where Native Americans continue to collide with European-American immigrants -- and even the free-for-all spirituality of the Burning Man utopian experiment in a remote western desert. Those visits, as well as others, formed a week-long, front-page series in the Free Press, headlined for the dominant spiritual theme that Crumm and Hile discovered in the U.S. heartland that year: "Anger in America."

Then, more recently (after reading about Jeff Howe's new term) in November 2006 in the pages of the E-zine Spirit Scholars, Crumm carried Howe's business-related label a giant step further to describe the basic nature of this spiritual tidal wave that's been sweeping around the world.

After that initial series of articles in Spirit Scholars, Crumm launched a larger journalistic study of the phenomenon, interviewing scores of people across the U.S., especially in dozens of Michigan congregations. The result was a major two-day, front-page report in the statewide Detroit Free Press -- the first use of the term "crowdsourcing" in the Free Press -- and the first major journalistic exploration of its usefulness in explaining powerful forces reshaping contemporary religion.

Some people say this reshaping of religion is decades in the making. Others say it's been building for about 500 years and that what we're witnessing is the earthquake at the end of a half-a-millennium-long cycle of Reformation. Some say it also has been sweeping through Islam for a couple of decades now and this trend explains a whole lot about the frantic percolation of voices and political movements in Islam around the world.

In early April, Michigan's First Gentleman Dan Mulhern, whose professional specialty is leadership coaching and who hosts a daily radio talk show (on Michigan Talk Network WJIM-1240-AM) invited Crumm onto his show to talk about Crowdsourcing Religion -- the first time the concept was explored on Michigan's airwaves.

Of course, the force behind this idea -- the historic shift in power and authority from religious leadership to the consumer-oriented adherents of religious movements -- has been building for years. If you're thinking that it may be a journalistic invention, then check out the highly persuasive set of global data crunched by University of Michigan sociologist, Dr. Wayne Baker, whose book also is highlighted in the right-hand column of this site. Baker also is cited in the Free Press series on Crowdsourcing Religion (below).

Unfortunately, for years, church-growth experts and other religious consultants have not really grasped the underlying principle here. Instead, a host of these agents have tried to sell religious leaders on marketing concepts ranging from rock bands and projection screens to the need to deliver home-made bread or cookies to visitors. While those innovations may be popular in some settings, they miss the basic cultural shift. Here's the tidal wave: Americans remain deeply connected to their religious values -- but they also have an almost overwhelming desire to make their own individual choices and to express their own spiritual insights. Those powerful forces are documented in Baker's work and are obvious in detailed reporting across the U.S.

So what does this phrase "Crowdsourcing Religion" add to the mix? Well, it names that tough-to-grasp concept and allows clear-eyed planning for religious movements in the future. Over the next two years, we guarantee you that you're going to be hearing so much about Crowdsourcing that you'll feel like an expert, even if you haven't done your homework.

And, the already red-hot words will become a household phrase, because these words have a whole lot more utility than such puzzling religious buzz-phrases as "paradigm shift," "postmodern Christianity," "emergent church" and that sad, sad cliche: "contemporary worship." What in the heck do those phrases mean? And, has anyone ever agreed to a definition of "emergent church"? In contrast, "Crowdsourcing Religion" is crystal clear: It means the religious authority of clergy is shifting to the people once known as parishioners.

Want to Catch Up on this remarkable cultural shift?

Well, first, Wired has maintained the original Howe story from June 2006, which you can Click Here to read. It was visionary and changed our vocabulary, but it also was limited mainly to business applications. The main Headline: The Rise of Crowdsourcing The SubHead: Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.

Then, fast forward to Spirit Scholars landmark series, which started on November 7, 2006. Here are quick links to our entire series on this theme. There's also a "Crowdsourcing" category in the left margin of this site:

Crowdsourcing I: The Mystery 
Crowdsourcing II: The Prophet
Crowdsourcing III: The Church
Crowdsourcing IV: Whose Crowd?
Crowdsourcing V: What's in a Name?
Crowdsourcing VI: It's Our Mirror
Crowdsourcing VII: Transcendent Prose?

To read the Detroit Free Press stories that followed on March 18 and 19 of 2007, CLICK HERE to jump to Crowdsourcing Congregations Day No. 1 Or, to read the Second Day story, CLICK HERE to jump to Crowdsourcing Congregations Day No. 2 (If you have trouble loading those pages, or if the Free Press link eventually expires, we've also got a text-only version of these stories attached to this post -- which you can read by clicking at the link at the end of this piece.)

THEN -- on March 28, 2007, nationally known church-development guru Bill Kinnon jumped on board. He picked up on a June 2006 essay by New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, titled, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience." (Click here to read Rosen's original piece.) Rosen was coming to his own conclusions about this juggernaut in the business of media -- and this was long before Americans woke up to the stunning sale of YouTube to Google and before the more stunning announcements of layoffs at a host of big American newspapers.

Borrowing Rosen's headline, Kinnon posted a blast on his Web site, titled: The People Formerly Known as the Congregation. It's a sign of the fragmentation of religious life across the U.S. (in other words, it's evidence of Crowdsourcing Religion) that our "nationally known gurus" these days actually speak in limited spheres. Kinnon's article was regarded nearly as a Martin Luther-like hammer blow to the door of a parish church -- but mainly in evangelical Christian circles, it seems. Kinnon is virtually unknown in other enormous religious spheres across the U.S.

Nevertheless, his March 28 article is rattling around the internet, picking up steam. Actually, Kinnon never uses the phrase "Crowdsourcing Religion." His eloquent appeal is aimed more at Rob Bell-style, emergent-church innovators. Among his hammer blows in his piece is an appeal to once and forever end the gender bar in religious leadership. But, even without the key label "Crowdsourcing Religion," Kinnon clearly is a kindred spirit in this great awakening.

So, here are Quick Links to these Rounds in the rising national discussion:

CLICK HERE if you'd like to read Kinnon's original piece -- and click around on his site to find various comments and see some of the online buzz he's generated.

CLICK HERE to jump back and read Spirit Scholars initial take on the sale of YouTube, now recognized as a powerful marker of this cultural shift.

FOR a Case Study in Crowdsourcing Religion -- complete with YouTube involvement -- CLICK HERE to read our first story on grassroots Catholic efforts to keep Bishop Tom Gumbleton at his parish in Detroit. And CLICK HERE to read more about that dispute. Tom's supporters lost, but that was mainly because Tom quietly chose to walk away from the dispute himself, so the crowd lost its cause early in  the struggle.

Then, for another mini-Case Study -- on the use of YouTube to Crowdsource the religious dispute over evolution, CLICK HERE to find links to a couple of dueling YouTube films.

And, finally, if you find this may be easier than loading the Free Press page -- or, if the Free Press link eventually expires -- you also can click the link at the end of this article to jump to a text-only version of the Free Press series.

A Helpful Snapshot of Expert Resources in Biblical Archaeology, Summarized Online

Everyone with an interest in religion inevitably looks into the past and here's a terrific one-stop summary of experts and online resources in "Biblical Archaeology."

These pages are sponsored by the Religion Newswriters Association, the nationwide professional group for full-time journalists who specalize in covering religion. They're well organized and, if you check it out, you'll find links to a whole host of other "resource pages" the group has commissioned in recent years.

Since this resource is aimed at journalists, the current version that just recently was posted to the RNA's Web site focuses on current and upcoming issues. For instance, did you know that from June 29-Dec. 31, 2007, the San Diego Natural History Museum will host a major Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. The museum says that this will be the largest and most comprehensive Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit ever, according to the RNA site.

The introductory paragraphs on the RNA resource page provide a telling insight into the thinking of secular newspapers, magazines and online publications these days, concerning these issues. Here's how the article starts:

From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Gnostic Gospels, from new clues about the Exodus story to the "discovery” of the tomb of Jesus or the remains of Noah’s Ark, biblical archaeology is no longer a scholarly field of dusty research. Today it is headline-making news and megamillion-dollar entertainment, as The Da Vinci Code phenomenon showed.

The breadth of this “Indiana Jones” appeal is such that it seems that no major Christian or Jewish holiday can pass without a new theory or piece of evidence emerging that purports to confirm the accounts of the Bible or upend biblical tradition.

CLICK HERE to jump to this RNA page, which is packed with links and references.

As you scroll through the names, institutions and links provided, you may wind up scratching your head about the overall listing. Anyone who scans this list, given the distinctive nature of our own backgrounds in reading and education, almost certainly will spot gaps in the list.

You'll also wonder about the organization of the page. Why is Darrell Bock at Dallas Theological Seminary the first name on the list of National Sources with the more popular Bart Ehrman further down the list and the more substantial James M. Robinson toward the bottom. Well, the answer is that these names are alphabetically arranged -- while other portions of the listings (like the Organizations section) don't seem to follow that order. So, it may seem a little puzzling, but there's great stuff here.

ALSO -- there's at least the start of a Regional Resources list. You can select a region from an interactive "map" on the main page -- or simply click on our link below ...

CLICK HERE to jump to that Regional page on the site. Once again, almost anyone who checks out the Regional listings will find gaps. For instance, the Midwest list contains not a single name from Michigan -- and clearly we've got a number of nationally known scholars in this field sprinkled across our state.

But, hey -- It's a start. And, because it's aimed at journalists, it's full of online links and contact information. All in all, it's a valuable set of Web pages for writers, program organizers, clergy, scholars -- and anyone who's intrigued by the subject.

As we like to say at Spirit Scholars: Read on!

Step Back a Century into one of Michigan's Religious Masterpieces

A story in Easter Sunday's Detroit Free Press drew a host of questions about St. Albertus, the closed Catholic parish just north of Eastern Market in what once was the city's thriving Poletown neighborhood.

People who drive the I-75 corridor north and south from downtown Detroit know the nearby landmarks, St. Josaphat (that's the steeple right along I-75 that seems to merge with the towers of the Renaissance Center as a trademark of Detroit) and Sweetest Heart of Mary (those are the towers on the opposite side of the freeway from St. Josaphat). But most commuters aren't aware that just a stone's throw down the same street from St. Josaphat and Sweetest Heart is the greenish octagonal dome of St. Albertus -- and that the church itself still is open sometimes for tours and once-a-month Mass.

The most common question raised is: How can we find out more about this place? Can we visit? Could we arrange a field trip for a class?

So, in this article we're going to give you that information.

FIRST: Yes, the volunteers who run the non-profit historical association that's trying to preserve the building do like to host tour groups, especially groups that might consider helping out with the effort or perhaps leaving a donation to help shore up the site. They're especially interested in educational groups, since a number of the volunteers hope that there might be a future for the site as a historical venue.

THEN, if you missed it -- here's just an excerpt of what the Free Press story, by David Crumm, reported on Easter Sunday's front page:

"Easter is about discovering new things, and that's why I love coming to St. Albertus," Rick Lapham, 45, of Hamtramck said as he helped dozens of volunteers welcome Holy Week pilgrims from across metro Detroit as they visited St. Albertus and other historic Polish churches Thursday night.

"You can walk into St. Albertus a thousand times and see a thousand new things," Lapham said, pointing to myriad images of stars, angels, saints, biblical stories and historical scenes decorating the church's windows, walls and soaring ceiling.

Described on its Michigan historical marker as the site of Detroit's first Polish-Catholic parish, founded in 1872, the dazzling Gothic Revival church now is a nonprofit historical site, but it will reopen today for a special 11 a.m. Easter mass.

Since St. Albertus' closure as a parish in 1990, it has been tended by about 200 devotees of this slice of Polish-American heritage, including Lapham. They have kept the place heated and in remarkably good shape, despite a few patches of crumbling plaster in the rafters.

In their effort to bring new life to this corner of the city just north of Eastern Market, the Polish American Historic Site Association, which now owns and maintains the building, has received permission from the Archdiocese of Detroit for occasional masses.

The men and women wandering through the building Thursday night often gasped as they threw back their heads to peer at the angels and stars far overhead.

There's a wonderful web site for St. Albertus complete with some of the church's history, some photographs to give you an idea of what you'll see -- and all the contact information you'll need to schedule a tour.

CLICK HERE to jump over to the group's Web site and read more. The volunteers have high hopes for the site, although it's a building sitting right on the perilous fault-line between preservation and -- well, the alternative.

The photos we're showing you here are by Jann Soltis, who is part of the effort, and we're including just a few of them here simply to give you a little tease of what you'll find inside the church -- and in the Albertus Web site itself.

The church's interior is fascinating, especially as a means of catching a glimpse of the vivid spiritual life of Polish-American Catholics! To stand in the nave of the church and peer across the sea of densely packed wooden pews, constructed for the physically smaller immigrants a century ago, is like peering into Detroit's distant past.

But, it's unclear how long the site can last without significant help. The exterior walls need tuck pointing. Interior walls are in pretty good shape, but patches of peeling plaster seem to pepper the interior ceilings.

So, if you love Detroit's religious heritage -- check it out!

(Maybe Someday Soon) They'll Know We are Faithful by Our Blogs, by Our Blogs

(April 13 UPDATE on this rapidly unfolding story: Tim O'Reilly very quickly got an earful about his proposals. Open Source "thinking" works like a rifle shot these days. And among other things, he heard back loud and clear: "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' Badges!" Click here to read his fascinating "Lessons Learned So Far" Then, here's the original story we posted ...)

It seems spiritually appropriate to us that the man who became famous for "branding" the latest in software publishing with antique black-and-white drawings of creatures from the natural world -- exotic bugs, mammals, reptiles, birds and so forth -- now may be emerging as a prophet of civility in the Wild West of the Blogosphere.

Of course, at first glance, Tim O'Reilly's life is peppered with contradictions. The 53-year-old Irish American carved out his own publishing empire, but also has been a major proponent of open-source development. He made a bundle selling books, but now sells most of his training materials online for remarkably modest fees.

And, now -- bless his heart! -- O'Reilly has turned to trying to develop a self-policing protocol to control some of the savage commentary zipping across the vast reaches of the Internet these days.

Truth be told, the Internet has always been the Wild West of global culture. That's part of its charm. That's why we've got well-worn terms like "Troll" (for a Web poster who finds fulfillment dropping into web sites to spill some bile and then depart) and "Flame" (for an especially heated E-attack).

But, now that so much of our communal life has moved online, millions of people now regard the Internet as an extension of their living rooms -- and pillar publications like daily newspapers are throwing open the gates to their Web sites and encouraging readers to post comments 24-7.

The result, which has been noted by nearly all of the major newspapers across the U.S. over the past year, is the creation of hostile environments in which bigots feel free to set off Improvised Online Devices in the spaces provided by such family newspapers as the Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and other many other major media sites.

In some cases, we're talking about incredibly vile stuff! Webmasters at the Detroit Free Press, in recent months, have been faced with racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian comments -- to name just a few of the ugly notes that hateful folks have dropped into its reader-commentary spaces online. Most of these bombs have been caught and removed, before they hurt too many readers -- but the problem is not unique to the Free Press. It's a problem across the board when carefully edited publications suddenly throw open their traditional filters in the online world.

Now, if you're a regular Spirit Scholars reader, you're probably already thinking: Hey, the larger issue here has a broad application! It's true. Over the past year or so, this fierce level of rhetoric also has peppered diverse religious and ethnic communities.

It's as if many people have forgotten traditions of tolerance and hospitality that are the core of a civil community.

Well, O'Reilly can't solve the entire problem of rogue rhetoric in American culture at the moment, but he's at least trying to tackle it in the online world -- especially the Wild 'n' Woolly Blogosphere.

In essence, what he's proposing is a self-policing effort in which the Webmasters of popular sites will pledge themselves to civil discourse. Plus, he's also proposing a creative "Logo" system by which Blogs can identify their individual policies on rhetoric. (The 2 logos shown above are a couple of examples O'Reilly has displayed on his own Blog.)

The idea is that sites promoting civility (that is, sites that will vigorously police their posters) would  herald this commitment with a prominent, reassuring logo. Then, those sites that want to maintain the older Wild West style of shootin' from the hip will warn readers before they dip into those dangerous waters.

Here at Spirit Scholars, by the way, our readers largely prefer to Email us directly -- and we provide our Email link prominently on the site (right up there at the top of the page). Readers also are encouraged to post Comments, but we've got a fairly bullet-proof Comment policy here in which readers pretty much have to identify themselves to our readership in order to leave notes on our site.

That idea actually reflects the very first principle of O'Reilly's draft policy: We take responsibility for our own words.

Here are some links to explore what he's doing -- and we all should feel free to jump over to these "works in progress" and lend a hand!

The core of this effort is a Wiki site that's open for online discussion and editing. Click here to jump over to the draft of the new policy -- and, if you feel so moved, to offer commentary or even take a crack at editing the text.

There are links at the bottom of that Wiki page to "read more" about this effort. But, here's a Quick Link to O'Reilly's first online posting about the effort.

And then, here's a Quick Link to O'Reilly's second "take" on the project.

Also, feel free to CLICK HERE and Email us at Spirit Scholars, with your thoughts.