Spirit Scholars

Crowdsourcing Religion: "Our Story Thus Far" in the Wired-NYU Forum ... (Part 3)

This is the Third and Final report on what this nationwide forum (co-sponsored by Wired Magazine and NYU) calls
"Open Source Religion:"

Click here to read Part 1.

Click here to read Part 2.

The Project's Team Home Page has been here.
 

Ultimately, how Open is our Source?
    Or, to put our final query another way: How open are we to Ultimate Sources?
    Over the past five weeks, our team first explored the cultural shift toward Open Source Religion in all its self-expressive diversity. Then, we pondered the nature of the friction that accompanies such a deep-seated, cultural transformation.
    But, in this era of open-source religion, we finally must come to terms with the Three Most Important Spiritual Questions of Our Age: Why should I get out of bed in the morning? How will I make it through another stressful day? And, at the end of the day, where is the evidence that anything I did today mattered?
    These are echoes of the timeless religious questions: Why are we here? How shall we live? And, in the end, where is the resonance of good and evil in the universe?
    Want to see those questions played out in an individual life? Team Member Stephanie Birch’s short essay in this final phase of our work is a strikingly clear snapshot of these daily reflections. In her piece, this young journalist moves through a typical day, starting with reflections on home and family, through work at her office, to final thoughts about her experiences. At one point during her day, a coffee-break conversation at her office about cutthroat management styles prompts her to wonder: “What is success and how far is too far in achieving it?”
    If we’re honest with ourselves, this is the kind of open-source reflection that most of us pursue on a daily basis without even pausing to identify it as spiritual.
    These basic, daily, universal questions are woven into the DNA of religion: a long double helix spanning and twisting through the millennia –- one outer strand of religion offering “revelation to be accepted;” the other outer strand offering “quest to be pursued.”
    The world’s most enduring religious traditions include both strands.
    Islam, for instance, is both submission to a religious revelation, but also a call to pursue daily spiritual challenges and, even, the global quest of the Hajj. To see these principles reflected in an individual life, read team member Sarah Alfaham’s essay in response to our third inquiry, which she calls: “Staying Fit Through Muslim-Colored Lenses.” Watch the way she relates to relatives, to the traditions they are expressing, to her community and to her own aspirations. This is a beautiful snapshot of a well-integrated, eyes-wide-open, open-source religious life.
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Spiritually Exploring "A Day Outside the Walls"    
    In many cultural settings down through the ages, one strand of the religious DNA seems to dominate. And, our group overwhelmingly agrees that -– for better or worse -– we’re in the midst of a cultural setting in the U.S. where the “quest” strand (the strand of individual self expression or “open source”) has turned squarely toward us until it dominates our vision of faith.
    So, how open is our source? How clearly do we see? And what do we perceive?
    After two decades of covering religion’s impact on American life for the Detroit Free Press, as the group's editor in this project, I can report that the ground, indeed, is shifting beneath our feet. Most of the exciting spiritual news these days unfolds outside the walls of organized religion. It echoes from books, music, movies, television, Web sites, grassroots organizations and the under-the-radar choices of ordinary people that build until they suddenly seem to surface.
    So, to explore this final question, most of our team members spent what our team described as A Day Outside the Walls, trying to discern spiritual meaning in American life from a wide variety of perspectives. Then, they produced brief essays.
    As in our first two waves of queries -– strong patterns emerged (even though our team members are well aware that we’re not a random sampling of Americans).
    When people set out to record a day’s reflections outside the walls of organized religion, the first thing many people noticed was the exterior of those walls. “You can’t help but see the walls,” wrote team member Wayne Baker, recording a whole array of houses of worship that he passes in his daily commute to the office. “You pass them everyday, a continuous reminder of the presence of religion in our lives.”
    From noting such physical walls, it’s just a little leap to perceiving the cultural walls of religious tradition in other forms.
    Team member Beckie Supiano noticed the prayer candles and incense for sale at a grocery store in Chicago—tangible evidence of widespread religious practice. Then, she also spotted a personal shrine maintained by the shop’s Indian owners--evidence that such religious artifacts are put to use in the neighborhood.
    Leaping even further, team member David Cohn suddenly perceived the ritual of a graduation ceremony in a new way: “The calling of names, one by one, so people can be applauded by friends and family, receive a certificate and walk off the stage again. Oh my gosh! It was my Bar Mitzvah all over again, I realized. Granted there was no chanting. But Dean Lemman, dean of Columbia’s journalism school, was essentially acting as the rabbi—head of the ceremony, who as the head of this institution was granting people their masters degree—and pushing them into ‘adulthood.’”
    Once one’s vision expands, spiritual walls are everywhere.
    On his Day Outside the Walls, team member Tim Moran, a freelance journalist, covered a press conference at a venerable Michigan landmark, the stately Detroit Athletic Club. Arriving that day, he noted that the DAC is “another form of temple, this one to the world of business and success.” And, even the press conference with automobile-industry experts took on spiritual forms. “In the upper room, there’s communion of sorts among those dedicated to the religion of cars. Apostles of design are being quizzed mildly by the Pharisees of the press.”
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The Challenge of Perception in a Concrete World
    At this point, are we sounding silly?
    Hardly.
    This question of perception lies at the core of religious tradition. It’s pointedly explored in Eastern traditions, especially Buddhism. But it also lies at the core of the Abrahamic traditions. For instance, Psalm 96 is a hymn that celebrates unfolding spiritual perception until, near the end of this ancient song, “the trees of the forest sing for joy.” And, the young Rabbi Jesus once was warned by local authorities that his followers were becoming too boisterous with their religious expressions in the city’s streets—to which Jesus acidly replied from a whole new level of perception (in Luke 19): “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”
    The question then becomes: Once we’re floating out here in this open-source cosmos of spiritual reflection -– how do we tell a singing forest from a looming hurricane and how do we tell a shouting stone from an Improvised Explosive Device?
    Team Member Joe Carson, an evangelical Christian, zeroed in on this point in his response, describing his own “mental eyeglasses.” And, what’s striking about his response is that he actually provided Three Daily Answers in his response -– without having seen the specific Three Daily Questions as detailed in this final report.
    His essay is brief, but diamond sharp: Carson wrote, “I assent to all of the following theological contentions as a basis of a hopefully reasonable faith, but a faith nonetheless, not something empirically and logically provable.”
    Remember our 3 Questions? Why get out of bed? How do I survive a stressful day? And where is a sign that my life matters? Without the Questions in front of him, Joe wrote these Answers:
“1.) God exists.
“2.) God cares about me, personally.
“3.) It is important for me to try to ascertain and advance God’s will in and through my life on planet earth with my fellow earthlings and other parts of created order.”
    Pretty strong answers to all 3 questions.
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The Quest for Clarity Among Rolling Stones
    As it turns out, clarity is a challenge even larger than conflict in an age of Open Source Religion.
    That’s not merely your editor preaching. Pick up the May 3-17, Fortieth Anniversary edition of Rolling Stone magazine and read the spiritual voices of the nationwide forum chosen by that magazine’s editors. They didn't pick any spiritual softies for their reflections on the past four decades.
    Nevertheless, our question of CLARITY rings like a bell throughout the Rolling Stone interviews.
    From the Rolling Stone Editors themselves: “The future seems unknowable, the past some distant land that bears no relevance to the instantly revisable clicks and playlists of our lives right now.”
    From novelist Tom Wolfe (described as "a non-believer” himself): “Anyone who thinks that religion is bad for society is out of his mind. We are now beginning to see what happens when we don’t have it.”
    From cultural titan Norman Mailer: “When you know too much information and you acquire it too easily, you tend either to use it in disagreeable ways, out of vanity, or you tend to be indiscriminate about it.”
    And, from rocker Patti Smith: “Maybe the kids on MySpace will have an anthem that will get them out in the streets. I don’t know what they’re gonna do.”
    Here at Assignment Zero, our own team member Marcy Jeffree Corneil put it this way in a quote worthy of that chorus from Rolling Stone: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. But how will I know when I’m ‘there’?”
    Our spiritual vision keeps playing tricks on us, doesn’t it?
    Team member Mel Bricker set out nobly on his Day Outside the Walls, expecting to find his profound spiritual reflections at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in “an exhibit of Picasso’s influence on American artists.” And, primed for this venue, he did note a few nice perspectives.
    But it’s the final line that’s the achingly beautiful note in his brief essay. Riding home with a somewhat disappointing mixed bag of reactions to the art show, he looks up at his fellow passengers on Bay Area Rapid Transit (the subway out there) and –- pop! -– “There were moments of delight and joy in their eyes.”
    A vision better than Picasso -- glimpsed in the eyes of the people sitting next to him on a subway.
    Bricker’s certainly not alone in this element of spiritual surprise.
    Team member Rabbi Robert Alper expected to find his spiritual insights in the visually exotic “Pan’s Labyrinth,” but wound up leaving the theater early, exhausted by the ponderous film. Then, almost by accident, in the theater lobby he witnessed a 12-year-old girl summoning the moral courage to confess to the theater manager that she had cheated on her ticket price.
    The theater manager was so touched by this spontaneous confession that he refused to accept the “two wrinkled dollar bills” she offered to repent of her sin. It was a moment of spiritual clarity and reconciliation that unexpectedly touched the weary rabbi as he headed home.
    Alper wrote: “That’s how I encountered The Good—the very Good—outside the walls.”
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Threatening Tribalism in these Strange Days, Indeed
    We're not naive. There are ominous--even deadly--forces rumbling through this surprising era of spiritual change.
    Team member Chris Warner-Carey scratched his head at the “tribalism” that’s a constant temptation in communities of vigorous self-expression. And, pushed even further, religious tribalism can explode into violence aimed at innocent outsiders.
     Team member Victoria Hart Gaskell asked: “When everyone’s ‘opinion’ becomes ‘gospel,’ what happens to an actual faith tradition? Does it finally become open-sourced into something unrecognizable or entirely new, or does it disappear altogether?”
    John Lennon prophetically described the problem this way:
    “Everybody’s talking and no one says a word
    “Everybody’s making love and no one really cares
    “There’s Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stairs. …
    “Nobody told me there’d be days like these!
    “Strange days, indeed!”
    But, we’re a hopeful lot. Our forum of 40 from an enormous range of religious perspectives spent more than a month wrestling with these historic questions—and, that alone, is a testament of spiritual aspiration.
    “Even with the troubling aspects, I welcome the open-sourcing of religion much more than I am troubled by it,” Gaskell ultimately decided.
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Finally, Walt Disney, a Fat Cat and 2 Spiritual Daughters
    To leave this journey on a threatening note would not be true to the tone of our team.
    Everyone who is worried about the future should read Team Member Cait Ramshaw's marvelous essay on the spirituality of Disney World. Cait, who goes by “DefSufi” in our group, narrates her day at Disney as a delightful movement from cynicism about the cult of Disney (“Entering Disney is very much like going to a mega-church. You give your first donation at the parking gate and … you get a little Disney sermon on the way in.”)—to a surprising affirmation of spiritual lessons we all can learn, even at Disney World!
    There’s an amazingly pragmatic affirmation of life in the world-famous park, she writes, as if surprised by what she wound up concluding.
    The overall spiritual lesson is: “Once you accept your circumstances, you can work with them, even if you can’t change them,” she writes, adding later, “And when I look at life in the ‘real world’ -– which several religions teach is just as much a Fantasy Land as is a section of Disney World -– it’s very much the same. I can’t make my mandatory work week shorter than 40 hours, but I can choose a job that I like, associate mostly with people I like, peacefully tolerate those I don’t and make my day pleasant.”
    And, it's impossible to read team member Gail Katz's final essay without wanting to brew a comforting cup of tea and ponder a bright future dawning. After charting a typical day of her own open-source, religious activism, Katz settles back for the night, confident (without even saying it in so many words) that she's got life-affirming answers to all the day's Three Questions. She writes, "As I curled up under the warmth of the blankets against the chill of the night with my fat cat beside me, just before I turned out the light, I pondered how much spirituality had heightened my day."
    Finally, there’s not a more eloquent affirmation in our whole stack of our team's third-wave essays than the closing of Marcy Jeffree Corneil’s piece: “My daughters are among the most spiritual people I know. During her undergraduate years, one of them wanted to go into full-time ministry. But now neither of them -– in their late 20s, one married, one engaged, no children on the horizon -- is comfortable with organized religion. Their lives exemplify my understanding of open source religion.”
    Then--and don't miss this--then, Corneil writes this final line as a mother addressing her daughters' future: “It is my fervent prayer that they will both be seekers and deliverers of spirituality with those around them, and that they will raise their children in relationship with the Creator.”
    What a benediction, hmmm?
    Open. Source. And, Religion.

A REPORT BY ...
Sarah Alfaham, Robert Alper, Sarah Arthur, Wayne E. Baker, Craig Bamsey, Shelley Bates, Jeff Beamsley, Sofia Begg, J. Brent Bill, Stephanie Birch, John Melvin Bricker, Joe Carson, David Cohn, Marcy Jeffree Corneil, David Crumm, John Emmert, Victoria Hart Gaskell, Cynthia Hernandez, John Hile, Geri Larkin, Lisa Gray Lion, Gail Katz, Kathy Macdonald, Gregg Mann, Karen Masters, Torrey Meeks, L.A. Millinger, Tim Moran, David Myers, Joseph Naujokas, Michelle Poblette, Cait Ramshaw, L.E. Rayburn, Beckie Supiano, Chris Warner-Carey, Anna Wood.

LONG VERSION of "Our Story Thus Far" WRITTEN by David Crumm

(Creative Commons License allows team-members to repost and write their own versions as well)

A Red-Hot Scholar Comes to Michigan and Makes It into a Cool Summer Reading List

There's not a scholar of religion these days with a portfolio as broad as the host of global issues explored by Philip Jenkins -- whose new book on cultural collisions in Europe is highlighted in the Free Press new Top 10 List of Spiritual Summer Reading. (The list is published Saturday May 26 in the Free Press and, this year, includes two Michigan authors in the Top 10 list.)

Here's the biggest news on Jenkins: We've just learned that this red-hot scholar also is coming to Michigan for a three-day conference that's open to the public. (It costs a reasonable $95 for all three days -- with rates rising if attendees are bringing spouses or want a room on campus for the conference.)

This event is hosted by Rochester College, a Church of Christ school with a reputation for rigorous academic inquiry. Also on hand for the conference will be the multi-talented Edward John Larson, the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winner for his book "Summer for the Gods," which focused on the continuing impact of the Scopes Trial in America. Larson is a legal scholar, historian and writer and we don't recall many opportunities to hear him here in Michigan.

What's the point of this conference? Here is Rochester College's own mission statement on the three-day event: "The mission of the Christian Scholars Conference is: 'To create and nurture an intellectual and Christian community that joins individuals and institutions to stimulate networks of scholarly dialogue and collaboration.'"

Of course, that's what we're all about here at Spirit Scholars, too -- so we heartily recommend this program. You'll also see additional coverage of the conference coming up in the pages of the Free Press, as well. Click Here to jump to the Rochester conference Web site and read more -- and you can register there, as well.

Also, if you want to know more about Jenkins himself -- Click Here to jump to Jenkins' personal Bio page online. It's not much to look at graphically -- essentially it's his resume online -- but it's got a great check list of his many books.

Most teachers, clergy and even many leading lay people in Michigan already are familiar with Jenkins' work. His book, "The Next Christendom," really was his landmark publication -- bringing his voice to a whole new audience around the world. Since that book, he has shown up in countless media stories. And, at that point, rather than resting on his success -- he seems to have kicked into a scholarly sprint and has never looked back.

He has written about everything from Native American spirituality to the critical problem of child abuse. He's an expert on Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere -- and his new book examines clashing cultures in Europe.

The new book, "God's Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe's Religious Crisis," made the Free Press Top 10 summer list because of its fresh, solidly researched insights into Europe's religious evolution. What readers will discover as they move through his book is that the term "crisis" should have additional quote marks around it in Jenkins' title. Yes, there's a perceived clash of cultures, especially religious cultures, he agrees. But he goes on to argue persuasively that Europe actually is a fascinating and even a potentially hopeful public square where these traditions may actually be discovering new ways of accomodating one another.

ALSO -- We strongly urge Spirit Scholars readers to check out the overall Free Press Top 10 list. Two Michigan authors made the summertime list this year:

The Free Press honors Oakland University's Matthew Sutton for his superb book on Aimee Semple McPherson, which we've already highlighted here at Spirit Scholars.

Also honored is Dale Brown of Calvin College for his terrific new overview of Frederick Buechner's life and work. Of course, this is a book very close to Brown's heart, because after years of directing the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing, he's moving this fall to become Director of the Buechner Institute at King College in Bristol, Tennessee.

Bravo to all the terrific writers who've served up great summertime reading!

And, if you want to hear Philip Jenkins in person -- check out the June conference!

East-West Tours with a Fresh Perspective on the Need to Hear Global Voices

The East-West Center, the international scholarly group with headquarters in Washington D.C. and Hawaii that promotes understanding between the U.S. and Asia, is crisscrossing the United States currently with a group of Asian journalists.

They recently toured southeast Michigan. (The image at top, taken by photographer John Hile, shows the group gathered with a number of religious leaders from metro-Detroit at a dinner hosted by the American Jewish Committee's Michigan Director Sharona Shapiro.)

The visiting journalists' conversations with Michigan journalists raised a couple of cutting-edge issues that will interest a much wider audience, so Spirit Scholars will highlight 2 of those issues here:

First, one of the visitors was Malu Cadelina Manar, a well-known journalist from the Philippines who currently is Program Director for radio station DXND in Kidapawan City. (That's Malu in the center of the photo at right with long dark hair and a blue outfit. You can enlarge most photos on Spirit Scholars by clicking on them.) DXND is part of the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation, a Catholic-sponsored network in the Philippines that tries to exemplify the kind of culturally sensitive evangelization efforts that the Vatican has been talking about for more than a decade now. Among the major themes highlighted on the network are peacemaking strategies and an overall approach to journalism that's increasingly being called "Peace Journalism" in the UK and some areas of Europe and Asia. This evolving concept of "peace journalism" is not widely known among American reporters and editors, so far, partly because American news operations have been closing down foreign bureaus and have scaled back their global reporting resources in recent years.

Malu's radio station, in English, is dubbed "Radio for Peace" and, during her tour of the U.S. with the East-West Center, she says, one of her primary interests is exploring just how far this concept has spread in the U.S. (The simple answer is: Not far.) And she's also been talking with American journalists about how the principles behind this movement might mesh with the rising American trend of journalism that focuses on the lives of "real people" and "local communities." (And to that question, our Spirit Scholars answer is: There's a big potential for dialogue here that could lead to a recognition of common ground in these approaches to journalism.)

Since most Americans know little about this ongoing discussion among European and Asian journalists, here are some resources to explore:

First, the global discussion of "peace journalism" is about 10 years old and stemmed from a 1997 conference in Europe. A Web site called "Reporting the World" is coordinated by advocates of this approach. If you visit the site, click on the link to "Peace Journalism" and there's a pretty good overview of the concept.

Then, there are two names you should know in relation to this discussion: Two of the biggest international advocates of this strategy are British journalists Annabel McGoldrick and Jake Lynch. Within the "Reporting the World" site, you can find a 10-minute video-news report by McGoldrick on a complex collision of business, culture and activists groups in the Philippines that McGoldrick and Lynch regard as an example of this kind of reporting. Warning if you click on it! The video link starts with a 30-second advertisement that you must watch, first, and then the video-news report loads very slowly. But it is available to view, if you want to see what such a story might look like on television.

This team also has produced a 2005 book on the whole emerging dialogue, called "Peace Journalism." You can visit a Web site they've set up to promote that book by clicking here.

For teachers, discussion leaders and writers, there's also a free PDF of a 106-page workbook-guidebook produced by Jake Lynch about this strategy in reporting. You can find it through the "Reporting the World" site -- OR, if you want to check out the book directly, click here. This is an intriguing work-in-progress from Lynch that could spark a lot of thoughtful dialogue among students -- or could even wind up as a resource for adult discussion groups in congregations.

In a nutshell, this strategy's advocates argue (quite persuasively, we think here at Spirit Scholars) that too much global reporting focuses on violence, horrific details of conflict and descriptions of clashing forces that tend to demonize all sides. This new strategy amounts to a Call to Peace, urging journalists to focus on aspects of reporting that actually are not much different than what American journalists are already trying to do these days. In other words, both the new strategy -- as well as the prevailing American approach to journalism these days -- focus on reporting stories about "real people" and stories that examine the nature of our communities. Advocates of "peace journalism" are arguing, essentially, that we need much more of that approach on a worldwide scale.

Here at Spirit Scholars, we're not sure that a phrase like "Peace Journalism" is the most helpful banner to fly over this campaign. The phrase sounds activist in nature, when -- at its best -- this important critique of journalism could wind up finding common ground with powerful media strategies already emerging in the US. In the end, we all should be able to agree on the need to report more on "real people" and "communities."

Finally, while Malu was visting Detroit with the East-West tour, another strategy for raising American awareness of global voices that was discussed among journalists is a project developed by the Harvard University Law School library. This is a wonderful, cutting-edge effort in which library-sponsored Web editors try to identify and "amplify" voices from parts of the world rarely reflected in American media.

It's called Global Voices and you'll quickly discover its value by surfing to the site and poking around among the many offerings there. Here's a SURFING TIP: Once you reach the site's home page, click on the links for "Topics" and "Countries" at the very top of the site -- and you'll quickly see a fascinating visual "map" of materials available through the site.

  Here's how Global Voices' staffers describe their mission: Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard. With tens of millions of people blogging all over the planet, how do you avoid being overwhelmed by the information overload? How do you figure out who are the most influential or respected and credible bloggers or podcasters in any given country, especially those outside your own? Our international team of volunteer authors, regional blogger-editors and translators are your guides to the global blogosphere.

To that we say: Bravo!

As Our World Gets Smaller, Is It Time to Celebrate ... or Recoil in Fear?

Do we fear our world? Or do we celebrate its interconnection as God's Creation and seek ways to learn more about the gifts we can bring to this colorful mosaic of the human family?

As simple as that may sound, this intertwined question seems to be the defining line between violence and hope these days. Recently, we've spotted several creative efforts to push people toward the latter, compassionate conclusion.

The first is a new book by Yale University Press, called, “Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization,” by Nayan Chanda, the Director of Publications at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. (See a mini-review of his book in the right margin of this site and click on the title to jump to Amazon, if you'd like to grab a copy immediately. And, frankly,this is a book well worth grabbing.)

Despite its high-brow publishing pedigree (it's from Yale University Press), this book is intended for a general audience. It's an easily accessible, compellingly written overview of the world's increasing interconnections over many centuries. One of Chanda's main goals is dispelling conspiracy theories about globalization that keep popping up among fearful people who seem to be searching for some ultimate Boogey-person behind the continual interconnectedness of the human family on our planet. Chanda argues throughout the book that no one person or group has brought us to this point. Rather, a huge range of people with an equally broad range of motivations have shaped our mosaic.

And speaking of mosaics? Have you stumbled into the growing online project produced by frequent National Geographic photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand? It's called "6 Billion Others" and it's a mighty cool experience of global diversity "up close" on your computer screen. We recommend this site mainly for people with faster Web connections, although the site claims to have options for slow-speed surfers.

Arthus-Bertrand's greatest creative gift, which he showcased in his earlier "Earth from the Air" exhibitions and resulting coffee-table book, is to use his photographic talents to help people "see" in new ways. In "Earth from the Air," his creative idea was the perspective of height. His photographs showed us everything from farmers' fields to geographic landmarks to housing developments from new perspectives, forcing us to think about them in fresh ways.

Then, as he explains on his Web site, one day a few years ago, his helicopter was out of service for a day and he simply began interviewing ordinary people about their daily lives. He asked them about what makes them laugh, what makes them cry and what hopes carry them through each new day.

With a high-speed internet connection, his work-in-progress becomes a moving mosaic of men, women and children -- their faces popping up almost life size as they greet us with brief comments about their corners of the globe.

Finally, another educational approach to these issues is waiting for you right now at: "Understanding Race." It's a vast site that's been launched by the American Anthropological Association with support from the Ford Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

Teachers? Listen up! If you haven't discovered this site, you should check it out soon! Plan on surfing for a while in this site because there are so many aspects of it. For instance, there's a Game of Life Experience that's an interactive series of choices about everything from education to health care to law enforcement -- organized by your likely "life experience" if you fall into various racial groups. Want to know more about the history of racial attitudes? There's an interactive timeline with lots of background material to explore. Plus, there are specific lesson plans, recommendations on additional reading and all the other nuts and bolts that educators will find useful.

Beyond that, though, like Chanda's new book and Arthus-Betrand's "6 Billion" project -- there's also a sense of pure, creative, compassionate wonderment in this site. Check it out and you'll likely come away feeling just a little more hopeful about our colorful mosaic here in this neighborhood we call Earth!

Feeling the "Merchants of Immortality" Breathing Down Our Wrinkly Necks

"We're going to fall prey to the merchants of immortality."
(From a recent talk by Dr. Thomas R. Cole, the Beth and Toby Grossman Professor and Director of the McGovern Center for Health, Humanities and the Human Spirit at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.)

Dr. Cole warned us earlier this month about the spiritually high stakes of aging in a landmark address he delivered at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, northwest of Detroit.

"People now can buy an awful lot of anti-aging stuff that may not be good for them, and they may not even know it," Cole said. If people remain fearful about aging, he said, "we're going to fall prey to the merchants of immortality."

Welcoming the aging process as a natural part of life, rather than fearing it as an embarrassing problem, is the key to a more meaningful life, Cole said. (Click here to read the entire story about his recent visit via the Detroit Free Press Web site.)

Then, anyone who picked up the Sunday New York Times this morning must have sensed the prophetic nature of his voice.

The Page 1A Centerpiece of the Times was a deeply troubling investigative report by Charles Duhigg, headlined: "Bilking the Elderly, With a Corporate Assist."

The story reported: "Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fradulent telemarketers."

But, America's elderly are especially vulnerable, Duhigg reported: One cynical vendor was hawking a database of 4.7 million "Suffering Seniors" -- people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. Another database vendor was selling access to 500,000 seniors who were prone to gambling offers, promising, "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

Ironically, as readers leafed through the Times' A-section today, page A9 was a full-page advertisement for Lamcome's latest high-priced line of age-defying products: "Secret De Vie." And, if you're looking for "dramatic, long-lasting results" in making your skin look "softer and visibly more radiant" -- why, the price tag for 1.7 ounces of "Ultimate Cellular Reviving Cream" is only $225.

According to UNICEF's current appeals on behalf of needy children around the world, $500 will buy 1 full year of anti-AIDS drugs for an HIV-positive child in Africa. In other words, two tiny jars of cream to combat anxiety over the effects of aging are nearly the dollar-equivalent of another year of reasonably healthy life for a child in danger of developing full-blown AIDS.

These are challenging times as Cole pointed out last week. Full of anxiety. Full of tough spiritual choices about our own future -- and the future of our global family.

Crowdsourcing Religion: "Our Story Thus Far" in the Wired-NYU Forum ... (Part 2)

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Whether We’re Standing at a Well or a Sewer -–

We Couldn’t Be More Timely!

 

We’ve gotten to know each other in recent weeks, so let’s be frank about one of the Biggest Questions we’re facing: Is Open Source Religion a refreshing wellspring of spiritual resources –- or is it an open sewer?

Does that question sound too extreme? To be accurate in our reporting, no one in our Assignment Zero team has laid out the range of possibilities in such stark terms. But then, as many of us have pointed out, we tend to be a self-selected group with a respectful fascination of religion.

In fact, beyond our friendly forum, a far broader range of voices is echoing across American and global landscapes.

The urgency of our team’s open-source inquiry into emerging religious movements is underlined in almost daily headlines. In fact, this weekend, it was highlighted in a cultural icon no less influential than Sunday’s cover story in the New York Times Book Review, written by Time columnist Michael Kinsley. In a lengthy piece (which wound up saying more about Kinsley himself and the nature of New York literary society than anything else), Kinsley lavishly praised Christopher Hitchens’ new book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” Kinsley never got around to explaining exactly why Hitchens believes that religion is an open sewer, but Kinsley paraphrased Hitchens as indicating that people who “continue to believe in the unbelievable, or say they do … are morons or lunatics or liars.” Overall, Kinsley told the world in his Book Review essay that Hitchens’ axe-to-the-forehead approach to religion is an “impressive and enjoyable attack on everything so many people hold dear.”

Of course, Hitchens’ critique of faith is only the latest in a rolling wave of popular new books over the past year by critics of religion. So far, this work sells sufficiently well that each major publishing house seems to be offering at least one atheist title in this season’s catalogs of new books. AND, before our theistic majority in our team too casually dismisses these voices as self-absorbed, mistaken or irrelevant, the truth is that these voices are urgent trying to grapple with agonizing problems in our world just like we are. In fact, just beyond the periphery of our current forum, team member David Myers, a nationally known author himself and a person of deep evangelical faith, already is engaging in an intriguing, respectful dialogue with these voices through an open-source book he is circulating online called, "Letter to a Secular Nation" (that's Myers' take on Sam Harris' popular title, "Letter to a Christian Nation").

            This is not a call to arms among people of faith. That has not been the tone of the comments from our team. Rather, it's a sign of how urgently these issues need to be addressed. Myers isn't alone in his approach to the issue. The rising evangelical star and best-selling author, the Rev. Rob Bell, wrote the preface to the hot new atheist book, "I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes," urging Christians to thoughtfully read Hemant Mehta's new book. So far, there is little data to suggest that these new atheist voices alone are moving the needle on Americans’ overall religious assumptions. However, it’s obvious now that the question of the potentially explosive friction generated by the rise of open-source religious self-expression has become a red-hot topic in the public square. The spectrum of the larger American conversation is vast.

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Anxious Creativity

or a Recipe for Disaster?

In Phase One of our team’s reflections we demonstrated that this open-source movement in religion is the product of an ongoing American fascination with faith –- combined with a powerful desire for self expression and a widespread sense that our own personal religious insights are probably just as valid as those offered to us by traditional religious authorities.

To Hitchens, and apparently to Kinsley, this is a recipe for disaster.

Or, perhaps, this actually is an era of anxious creativity in religious life.

Anxiety definitely seems to be a factor. In the second wave of our reflections over the past week or so, our team members overwhelmingly attributed the basic problem of religious conflict to fear in an age of cultural collision and change.

We’re not casually dismissing this anxiety as childish fretfulness. There really are things to fear in our modern age!

Team Member David Cohn, in discussing his family’s attitudes toward religious outsiders, pointed to crucial generational differences in experience. “I know … the older members of my family, which is very tolerant, still have adverse reactions to people of other faiths. I don’t have that same fear—but the Holocaust is just a story to me. I never lived through fearing for my life because I was Jewish.”

Although revisionist historians with agendas against religion sometimes claim that “religion has prompted more wars and killings than any other force in history” –- the 20^th Century was a rude rebuke to that claim.

Estimates of 20^th-century death tolls vary widely among scholars, but the jaw-dropping triumvirate of mass killers in the past century are Nazi Germany (with more than 11 million dead, including the Jewish Holocaust), the Soviet Union (with more than 20 million dead under Stalin) and China (20-to-30-million dead under Mao). And, in each case, these were powerful political forces that aimed themselves, among other things, at crushing religious opposition.

Whoever may be doing the killing in any particular historical era, it’s a well-established fact that Earth is a dangerous neighborhood -– so, some fear is justified.

Add to that recipe the very nature of religious faith as a contemplation of the universe’s ultimate truths.

Team member L.A. Millinger put it this way, “Religion deals with absolutes: truth, holiness. It’s easy for people to feel threatened when their paradigm is questioned by someone who has a different paradigm.”

Couple that with a general coarsening of culture and the Wild West culture of the online world and there’s a perfect recipe for anxiety.

Millinger continued, “I have witnessed some very ugly exchanges in blogs and in comments in news stories on Web sites. Could it be easier to flame an opponent when they are faceless and you are looking into a computer screen? Would those hateful words be so easily spoken if that same opponent were facing us across a table? I think the Internet dehumanizes the exchange of ideas to some extent, and we forget that there are real people on the receiving end of our words.”

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Do We Really Fear Conflict?

 

Not everyone decries conflict and some voices in our team remind us that conflict can play an important role in religious reflection.

Team member Geri Larkin, a Buddhist monk, points out, “Conflict is conflict. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with it until someone needs to be the only one who is right.” Larkin comes from the Zen tradition that prizes the value of “dharma combat,” which we hasten to explain is not some exotic form of martial arts. The phrase is used to describe the clash of figures, perhaps a master and student, or two monks, seeking to hone their approaches to tough spiritual issues in sharp dialogues that can wind up appearing like crazy, colorful, rhetorical fireworks.

This idea isn’t foreign to other religious traditions. Students’ debates over Talmud are supposed to be vigorous clashes. Some of the best seminaries in the world are known for their rigorous, clashing voices.

The concept of jihad as articulated in most Muslim centers is not a call to “holy war,” contrary to what’s frequently repeated in American media. Rather, it’s an appeal to internal spiritual struggle. Many young Muslim men are named Jihad as a reminder by loving parents that life, at its core, is a religious challenge.

In fact, one team member after another, when asked to list examples of open-source religion that they’ve seen springing up in recent years, wound up citing dialogue groups either in personal or online forms.

The ranges in these dialogues vary widely.

Team member Joe Carson is a co-founder of one of the thousands of informally organized open-source religious groups that have formed outside the walls of specific houses of worship in recent years. But to be spiritually effective in the lives of its members, the group “is limited to engineers who can profess to the Nicene Creed, which includes all major traditional Christian sects-denominations,” Carson writes.

That’s a different circle, obviously, than team member Mel Bricker’s open-source group, Creation Spirituality Communities that draws its circle around “individuals who have been awakening to a spirituality rooted in an organic relationship to the human community, Earth and all creatures.”

That’s different than team member Tim Moran’s Habitat for Humanity, which now is world famous for its eclectic circles of volunteers -– welcoming even non-religious people to grab hammers and saws and join the work.

And the Jimmy Carter aura of the Habitat circles is in an entirely different orbit of circles from the media-structured, spiritual circles described by team member Craig Bamsey, a marketing consultant and futurist. In his ongoing research, Bamsey wrote, he “frequently ran across mostly white teens, male and female, who would fill their iPod playlists with both Gangsta Rap and Gospel music.” This virtual circle of spiritual sound seemed jarring to researchers, but clearly made sense to the teens who welcomed the collision of rhythms and cultures.

Read through the individual responses of our team members –- which should be archived somewhere and perhaps posted as a seedbed for others to follow with news of other emerging open-source groups –- and the idea of conflicting religious voices turns out to be something that we welcome, rather than fear.

We realize that not everyone will agree on everything in any of the circles that we draw.

The key seems to be whether that natural conflict takes the form of fascinating new colors, tastes and inflections we enjoy exploring in religious life – or boils over into scalding attacks.

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Hey, Stuff a Sock in It! … Uhhh, Please?

Nothing frustrates our team members more than self-proclaimed, angry authorities on religion. More than that, we all seem to blame the media for showcasing the extreme voices more prominently than the experiences of ordinary Americans.

Team member Tim Moran, a member of the media himself as a long-time freelance reporter, wrote that the resonance of extreme religious voices has risen to the point that “every story becomes black-and-white conflict and every quote and explanation becomes banal and predictable -– a ‘Does so!’ vs. ‘Does not!’ opposition that rarely moves the discussion along. In the process, many good and thoughtful people are figuratively thrown under the wheels of Juggernaut.”

It doesn’t take a veteran to recognize the problem. Team member Beckie Supiano is at the opposite end of the journalism profession. She’s still in school and she understands the problem we’re all facing. “Conflict is a big part of what drives news, so there will always be pressure to find conflicts to report on. That said, there are things that will help. One is talking to more people who are not on the polar opposites of any given debate. This often means not calling the usual suspects for the canned quote.”

We know that our team isn’t a randomly selected sample of American adults; and we’re all are aware that we can skew our results based on our several dozen shared assumptions. Nevertheless, this point about the disproportionate impact of extreme voices is firmly rooted in data.

Team member Wayne Baker’s book on American culture argues, based on World Values Survey data, that there is far less religious conflict among everyday Americans than we may perceive from the sharp rhetoric of elites, echoed in our media.

Team member Robert Alper, a rabbi who regularly crisscrosses the United States as a full-time professional stand-up comic and author, underscored Baker’s conclusion based on his own wide-ranging observations. Alper wrote: “People DO talk about religion in a curious and respectful way. Most neighbor-to-neighbor discussions are terribly civil, because people know their neighbors personally, and they have a vested interest in maintaining good relationships. Heck, they might even just like their neighbors!”

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There’s a Firestorm Out There

-– So, Let’s Build Something Practical

Clearly discerning what’s happening in the midst of this firestorm of viewpoints –- from Christopher Hitchens’ razor-sharp screed to Pople Benedict XVI’s scolding tour of Brazil –- is extremely difficult these days.

Even the emerging concepts we’re trying to understand are fuzzy to us -– and we’ve been immersed in a high-level national forum on these issues for several weeks now!

Case in point: In his initial response to this second questionnaire, Alper said he wasn’t aware of any open-source religious projects – then he proceeded to demonstrate that he’s a living embodiment of the principle.

Researching a bit more about Alper’s work than he shared in his questionnaire, it turns out that, while he is ordained as a rabbi, he doesn’t have any particular hierarchical claim in the way he has interwoven his voice in American culture in a whole range of self-assertive ways. His humorous-and-inspirational book, “Life Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This,” is especially popular among Catholic readers. And, long before Muslim, Arab-American comic Ahmed Ahmed joined the popular “Axis of of Evil Comedy Tour,” Alper regularly appeared on stage in joint shows with Ahmed to encourage Americans to laugh about their religious biases.

This sort of Abe Lincoln approach to rebuilding American culture is evident throughout the best open-source religious efforts.

Team member David Myers, a professor of psychology, and his wife Carol, who built the world’s biggest St. Nicholas Web site from their modest home in Holland, Michigan, are living examples of this pragmatic American approach.

David Myers, who lives with a hearing disability, has become a leading promoter of technology that can transform houses of worship and public places for millions of hearing-challenged people. But here’s the key, open-source distinction in his activism: He wants technology that’s easily accessible to the masses, so Myers actually does not promote the newest and thus the most expensive technology. He promotes the best value for ordinary institutions.

Overall, the Myers are involved in so many open-source efforts and dialogues that it’s impossible to describe them all in our overview here, so we’ve added a stand-alone article on the Myers’ projects and parked it -– along with a couple of new articles that Myers is open-sourcing online for people to read in draft form -– over at the Spirit Scholars site.

To read more about the Myers’ open-source efforts, or to read his open-source drafts of his own upcoming articles, go to: http://www.spiritscholars.org/my_weblog/2007/05/hope_colleges_j.html

.

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As For Me and My Household …

We Can Get Along Even With Differences

There’s a sneaking suspicion emerging that, if the elites would only quiet down, the rest of us might get along just fine, thank you.

In this era of open-source religion, when everyone is a spiritual authority, we don’t need to hammer our lives into a false tableaux of unity, many of our team members are saying. In fact, in the end, no one seems to want a tableaux of simplistic piety.

Team member Chris Warner-Carey is part of a Pacific-coast interfaith group that celebrates open-source principles, but does not “try to cobble together a broad, theologically warm-and-fuzzy statement of shared metaphysical beliefs as the basis for our conversations. In other words, we reject that we should all ‘get along because in the end all religions believe the same things.’ We reject this because it is disrespectful of everybody’s unique faith tradition and it’s simply not true.”

Finally, this week, there’s not a more eloquent personal story in our couple of dozen responses than the one shared by team member David Cohn:

“In college, UC Berkeley, I worked at the student library. It’s a great student gig. … I worked there for 2.5 years roughly. I made a lot of friends –- we were staffed completely by students –- so you can imagine we all hung out after work, or saw each other on campus.

“The person who I became closest with was a girl named Arefa. She was a devout Muslim. I was a reform Jew. I dated girls for carnal reasons -– Arefa was waiting to begin a traditional courtship. I almost never went to temple, although I had a connection-history to the Jewish culture. Arefa lived and breathed Islam and was very active in the Berkeley Islamic community. …

“We couldn’t have been more different. But, without a doubt – we grew to enjoy each other’s company. She attended my graduation and met my parents. I have since visited her in D.C. … and met her future husband—a very nice and traditional Muslim man. I have gone to mosque with her during Ramadan, when she visited me in Brooklyn.

“I have learned more about spirituality from her than my own religious background in the last four years. That’s not to say I’m thinking of becoming a Muslim, but I do find it to be a good story. We have an interesting relationship of mutual respect and admiration. I truly do believe of all the people I met at the library, she is the only one I will be friends with for life.”

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(And so we end Phase 2 of our 3-Phase Project.)

Click here to read Part 3.

Compassionate Voice from Hope Raises Fresh Ideas on Hearing Loss and Atheism

Hope College's John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology David Myers is one of the most important prophetic voices on the national scene these days in a variety of fields -- and Dr. Myers is so committed to open-source conversations about emerging cultural issues that he has graciously shared with us one of his works in progress.

Myers' piece is a wonderfully optimistic article about technologies to help people with hearing loss recover full access to voices and sounds in public spaces, especially houses of worship. In his own life, Myers has adapted to severe hearing loss and has become a leading advocate of grass-roots solutions to this physical challenge, which affects millions of Americans. His innovative approach to promoting technology that's accessible to grassroots institutions around the world is a model for creative solutions to many different problems we're facing these days.

So, if you're specifically interested in hearing-loss issues -- please, read this draft-in-progress article that he's allowing us to preview. OR, if you're simply interested, more broadly, in creative solutions to complex problems, take a look at how Myers approaches a huge challenge like this by identifying, explaining and pointing people toward solutions that make sense. His work is a model for crowdsourcing solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems.

To read that article -- Click Here and you'll see it pop up in your computer window (readers with slow internet connections, be aware that it will load slowly). Or, there's also a link to this article in the "Read More" portion of our Web site's left margin.

The Myers' household in western Michigan is a virtual hive of innovation. Myers' wife, Carol Myers, has launched another international model of crowdsourcing religious resources. Virtually on her own, from their modest home there in western Michigan, Carol Myers has developed the world's largest Web site devoted to St. Nicholas, the religious model behind Santa Claus.

To see this demonstrated dramatically -- go to any search engine, type in "St. Nicholas" and hit "Go" -- and the first link that'll pop up will be Carol Myers' vast web site. Or Click Here to visit her Web site right now.

Why is her Web site an example of crowdsourcing? Because it was a bottom-up, grassroots project literally launched from a bedroom-office by a single person. So, it's a powerful example of religious self expression. And Carol's model quickly reached out to parishes, institutions, groups and other activists for St. Nicholas all around the world. She pulled them into her site -- and bounces visitors back out to them. Pure Crowdsourcing Religion in action.

Dr. Myers ALSO is on the cutting-edge of "open sourcing" online scholarly resources. Earlier this year, he was invited to be among the leading voices building Scholarpedia, a peer-reviewed Web site -- based on the general model of Wikipedia -- that will provide authoritative overviews of scholarly subjects for general readers. His initial project for that site is "The Psychology of Happiness," based on his own book on the subject. Click Here to visit Scholarpedia's home page. Or, Click Here to visit Myers' article-in-process. Again, he's inviting us to peer into that process "open source" and see the draft he's offered to the peer-review process at the site. A fascinating opportunity to see this new cultural arena emerge "real time."

The Great News about these emerging projects and discussions is that they underline the creative vitality of spiritual expressions across the U.S., these days. It's an exciting time to be part of this unfolding discussion.

Myers has a number of books for general readers on the market these days in addition to the hugely successful series of Psychology textbooks he has written for college students. If you want to read more of Myers' "voice," check out titles like "The Pursuit of Happiness."

It's not exaggeration to say that two of the major spiritual voices rising out of Michigan these days are David and Carol Myers. We're very happy to be able to help encourage and echo their voices here. So: Read on! And, as always, Click Here to Email us with your thoughts. We'd love to hear from you.

Creflo Dollar Bets on McChurches, Where Folks Won't Care If It's Live or Memorex

However people feel about the ministry of TV evangelist Creflo Dollar -- and opinions are sharply divided over his Pentecostal message that God wants people to be prosperous -- one has to be impressed by his entrepreneurial innovation.

His announcement this week tends to take one’s breath away: He's saying, now, that he has earmarked Battle Creek, Michigan, as the pilot for a vast project in what he envisions someday will become a 500-church denomination nationwide.

He’s already got his home church in College Park, Georgia, near Atlanta –- and he commutes by plane each week to New York City where he’s had a second congregation since 2004. That’s quite taxing. He has realized that, to add a third or fourth or 100th location is physically impossible via real-time commuting.

So, he’s using TV, a medium he already has conquered, to send himself to what he hopes will become hundreds of congregations simultaneously.

Dollar said in an interview this week that, if he could establish 500 congregations and expand them to an average attendance of 2,000 people, “then I would be able to minister to 1 million people at one time, and could do it through technology.”

The technology he’s talking about is satellite-linked TV broadcasts, which aren’t anything new in themselves. What’s new is the idea of launching a denomination like a series of McDonald’s franchises. The McDollar congregations (and that’s our phrase, not his, we need to point out) would develop their own local music-and-worship teams to lead the first hour of worship each Sunday. They’d also develop their own social-outreach programs, Dollar said this week.

But, once the hour of song and praise ended each Sunday morning, then everyone in all his churches coast to coast would focus on big screens on which his hour-long sermon will be beamed live from his home church near Atlanta.

His Battle Creek pilot opened this past Sunday, very quietly, attended by Dollar TV viewers invited to attend this experiment in worship at a community center on Michigan Avenue in Battle Creek. They were drawn via a direct mailing sent out from Dollar’s extensive nationwide mailing list. About 115 people showed up.

And, since no local congregation has formed yet, the entire service was led via a huge TV screen.
Alice Brown, a retired fine-arts illustrator, who attended with her husband Douglas Brown, a Battle Creek firefighter, said that it was a terrific experience.

“I actually don’t know if what we saw was live or not. And, honestly, I don’t think it mattered," she said. “For the first service, we had a big projection screen at least seven feet tall and 13 feet across in the front of the room. We had comfortable chairs for everyone to sit in and it was just like we were sitting there with people in Creflo’s church.”

“On the screen, when the music started and people were raising their hands and clapping, we sang and raised our hands and clapped along, too.”

Even Dollar acknowledges that he doesn’t expect “live” vs. “delayed” to be a huge distinction with his followers. In fact, delayed broacasts may be built into his church expansion plans to help with varying time zones and service schedules.

“Our goal is really to build churches that will hold about 1,000 to 1,500 people and, if we have to go to multiple services in those churches, then we will capture the message on DVD-R and we’ll replay it for the next service,” Dollar said. Unlike a pastor who can wind up exhausted after a high-energy sermon, Dollar said, “a DVD-R never gets tired.”

Of course, this raises all sorts of questions for preachers. For example, since the technology exists to burn messages quickly onto DVD-R discs, a preacher with multiple services in a busy mega-church could stop after preaching a “best” version. Then, the preacher could switch to the DVD-R on big screens for the balance of the preaching schedule that weekend. Or, if the pastor is called out of town, nailing a great sermon mid-week before his parish’s cameras, burning it onto DVD-R and then broadcasting it on the weekend wouldn’t be a problem.

So, that’s the basic question that Dollar’s staff is posing in this experiment: When it comes to preaching, is Memorex as good as live?

Before you jump to the conclusion that people certainly will want “live,” consider this: People already enjoy watching Dollar in the privacy of their own homes. What he’s betting on is that people will enjoy it even more, if these viewers come together to watch him in a hybrid congregation that’s half real and half virtual.

In Battle Creek, Alice Brown said she and her husband are very enthusiastic.

Dollar himself quietly dropped into Battle Creek on May 3 to meet key leaders of what he hopes will become his first-of-500 congregation. That impressed the Browns, too.

Alice Brown said that she and her husband plan to tithe to the new church. So, their response, so far, is whole hearted and sincere. The problem they have faced in the past, Brown said, is that it’s too far to drive from Battle Creek to reach big churches that have this particular kind of Pentecostal service “live.”

For instance, in Southfield northwest of Detroit, there's the Rev. Keith Butler, founder of the enormous Word of Faith Christian Center. Butler and Dollar are not partners in ministry. They're not part of the same denomination, even. But the gospels they preach are similar -- and Dollar says he regards Butler as a good friend.

So, the Browns might enjoy Butler's congregation, but from their perspective in Battle Creek, both Dollar and Butler are the same distance away from their home: Tooooo far. Now, thanks to Dollar and his staff, they can have that big-church, Pentecostal experience close to home.

Dollar has roots in the Pentecostal movement and often has been described by critics as a “prosperity preacher,” suggesting that getting rich is one of his ministry’s central goals.

Dollar said this week that the phrase “prosperity preacher” misses the larger message of his ministry.
“When I use the word prosperity I’m not talking just about money,” he said. “I could use the word success. I believe that God wants us to be successful in our spirit, our soul, our physical body and our relationships. Our finances are included in that but, but my message is much bigger than finances.”

If you care to read more about Dollar and his ministry, Click Here to jump to his personal Web site for Creflo Dollar Ministries. Or, Click Here to zero in on Dollar's own autobiographical summary on his site.
There's also a page for the Battle Creek pilot within the World Changers site that Dollar's staff also runs.
And, if you're curious about Dollar's nationwide schedule of revivals -- at which either he or his wife will personally appear -- then click here to check out the Dollars' travel schedule.

Here at Spirit Scholars, we're always curious to know what you think. Click Here if you'd like to send us an Email with your thoughts.

Looking Out a Window with Wendell Becomes a Powerful Prayer for Peace

"In the heron's eye
is one of the dies of change.
Another
is in the sun.
Each thing is carried
beyond itself.
The man of the window
lives at the edge,
knowing the approach
of what must be, joy
and dread."

In an era of war, and rumors of wars, prayer sometimes becomes so difficult that our labors to reach out to God can collapse of their own weight. If you doubt this point, look no further than the haunting journals of contemporary saints like Dorothy Day, and you'll find this truth sprinkled throughout her personal struggles.

Or, jump back thousands of years and reread Psalm 90. (If you're intrigued by Psalm 90, there's a link in the left-hand margin of this site to a 2006 column on the Psalm's profound and timeless message -- or, simply click here and you can read that earlier piece.) Through the millennia, the wise among us have been watching the natural cycles -- like the Psalmist watches the new grass spring up and, later, wither in the noonday sun. But, all too often we forget such lessons. When is the last time any of us sat back for an entire day to contemplate the spiritual wisdom of simply watching blades of grass rise -- and fade?

So, it's always a joy to find a sage like Berry surfacing among us to help us  re-orient our reflections and help us reclaim our spiritual tools in a fresh and -- as our Zen friends would put it -- a mindful way.

Wendell Berry is just such a saint, his feet comfortably rooted in those soil-caked work boots he so famously wore around his farm in northwestern Kentucky. A supremely talented American writer who once studied with the likes of Larry McMurtry (of "Lonesome Dove" fame), Berry decided in the 1960s to ground himself in American soil so completely that he actually returned to farming like his father before him.

Berry's story is well known to lovers of American spiritual writing, especially the branch of that tree that celebrates the values of rural life. Now, the small publisher Shoemaker & Hoard offers us a gorgeous volume of Berry's 1985 meditation called, "Window Poems." This is the sort of edition with big, clear type that makes poetry fun to read -- not to mention the strikingly beautiful wood engravings by Wesley Bates.

Berry's friend and beloved Kentucky Poet Laureate James Baker Hall writes the Foreword that sets the stage for Berry to arrive in verse form, settle himself next to his famous window-like lens on the world -- and reflect his way through various seasons along the Kentucky River.

Why mindfully "listen" to the natural world from the vantage-point of a window frame? Hall explains it well in his Foreword: "In Wendell's presence you understood without him saying anything that there were often better things to listen to than humans, even those so distinguished and interesting as yourself. Owls, for instance, the sound of an owl would shut down conversation at (Wendell's) Camp. A towboat pushing barges upstream, for another."

But his prose introduction quickly pales as Berry's pen begins to flow, page after page, and we look out his window with him -- the seasonal observations accumulating layer upon layer. Sometimes there is danger (a rising river perhaps); sometimes there is death (the dead wood falling from a dying tree). But the eyes are open, the ears are listening and there is a mindfulness about Creation that avoids the trap of other deadlier obsessions, Berry tells us.

Finally, he can write:

"Peace. May he waken
not too late from his wraths
to find his window still
clear in its wall, and the world
there. Within things
there is peace, and at the end
of things. It is the mind
turned away from the world
that turns against it."
...
"Let men, who cannot be brothers
to themselves, be brothers
to mulleins and daisies
that have learned to live on the earth.
Let them understand the pride
of sycamores and thrushes
that receive the light gladly, and do not
think to illuminate themselves."

It's a gorgeous book and a timely poetic meditation. We've got a mini-review of this new volume in our right-hand margin here. Click on the title there and you'll jump to Amazon. Read on!

Open Source Religion project for Wired-NYU reports on Our Story Thus Far ... (Part 1)

UPDATE from the front lines of the Open Source Religion Project at Assignment Zero, a project co-sponsored by Wired Magazine and New York University's School of Journalism: Spirit Scholars and the Detroit Free Press are co-sponsoring the Open Source Religion project within the larger Wired-NYU effort. Your Editor here at Spirit Scholars has been heading up that team, which recently produced our first public "progress report."

Based on 31 responses from men and women across the U.S., we've offered our online team members -- and the general public -- this open-source version of ...

Our Story Thus Far … (Part 1)

The biggest story in Open Source Religion can’t be found in any single program, congregation or Web site. The Big Story lies in ourselves as Americans.

This basic truth already has been demonstrated by our team at Assignment Zero, 31 of whom have filled out our first Questionnaire, a brief personal inventory of our spiritual experiences. As a group, we don’t pretend to be a random sample of all Americans. Among other things: We’re too small a group to represent the whole country’s attitudes. We’re heavily weighted toward the Midwest. And it’s clear we’re more “up scale” in various ways than the population at large. BUT – we do represent a fascinating diversity of American religious experiences. We’ve got a nice mix of ages in our team and a broad array of religious faiths, including those of no faith.

What’s most valuable about our insights as a group is that collectively we represent a highly sought-after range of people from the viewpoint of religious recruiters. We’re motivated, articulate, up-scale, reflective, compassionate. In short, we’re the kind of people, overall, that religious groups would love to recruit and engage as members. Of course, some of us already are leaders in congregations and – beyond that – some of us already are teaches and writers about religion.

That leads to the second, striking observation about our group: Given how attractive we are from the point of view of religious groups (and how some of us already are highly committed within religious groups) – it’s stunning how ambivalent we are, as a group overall, about what organized religion is offering us and how many religious leaders are focusing their attention and resources.

Just read our voices in our Questionnaires and you’ll see this basic point reflected in dozens of ways.

Consider Team Member Marcy Jeffree Corneil’s experience, which is so common across the U.S. that it’s a powerful example to highlight.
Read her personal inventory and you’ll want to meet this woman. She’s 62 and lives in small, up-scale town near Albany, New York. She’s fascinating, compassionate and enjoys good cinema. Who could resist that combination in a friend?
Yet here’s how she describes her religious experience at the moment –- stuck between her own open-source instincts toward faith and a local leadership that seems to her to be slamming doors in her face:
“I continued at the same level of religious involvement for the first 61 years of my life, teaching Sunday school, holding church offices, being deeply involved. The church I am a member of has gone through three very trying periods of pastoral problems; we are currently served by a weak and ineffective – but not offensive – senior pastor and an annoying – to me – uber-evangelical junior pastor. I can’t seem to relate to either of them and am personally frustrated with more right-wing lay leaders. I have pulled back from my level of involvement and from my attendance – my husband refuses to attend now.”
And then – then – Corneil writes this line: “But I find myself reading and thinking more about religion than I have in the past.” And she pointedly underlined the word “more” in her response – an almost achingly heartfelt plea for a new approach to religion from a 60-something American who’s far from any of the obvious communities of change like college campuses or big cosmopolitan cities.

That, in short, is a great snapshot of this fascinating mosaic of the cultural shift toward Open Source Religion that we are forming in our Team here.

The Larger Forces at Work ...

And these observations aren’t a matter of casual observation by your Editor here.
Consider this: The data from multiple waves of World Values Surveys, analyzed by University of Michigan sociologist Wayne E. Baker in his 2006 book, “America’s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception,” demonstrates that a cluster of values concerning religious faith are very strong and widespread across America. (Americans rank with traditionalist countries around the world, places like Pakistan, in the strength of our religious values.) But Americans also are almost off the chart in another powerful value – our desire for individual self-expression. (We rank with Scandinavia on that scale.)
(And – yes, that Wayne Baker who I’m citing here is a member of our Team.)

So, faith matters deeply to us – but the reality of Open Source Religion is that we, as Americans, expect to be able to crack open the doors of religion and chart our own most meaningful journeys through the resources and traditions we find there. The problem is that religious gatekeepers aren’t as willing or as inviting as we are.

There’s not a more striking example of this than in the responses of our Team Member who calls himself Mani. He’s a 30-year-old Hindu from New Jersey, who has a wonderful spirit of inclusion and spiritual exploration. And yet, as you read his responses, he hit a snag when he tried to visit a Zoroastrian temple – “and was told it was forbidden for people of outside faiths.”
Now, restrictions on access are common across religious groups – but Mani’s responses suggest that there are some barriers he’s had a little trouble crossing. “I wish to go to a synagogue and a mosque,” he writes. Yet, somehow that hasn’t happened yet.
He seems to be an ideal potential visitor. He reveres sacred spaces so much that he takes off his shoes when he enters a house of worship! Why wouldn’t religious groups want to throw open their doors and welcome such a visitor?

Old Definitions Disintegrating ...

Even our definitions of God, as we describe them in this public forum, indicate that the decades-old Gallup Poll protocol for categorizing Americans’ theistic attitudes is beginning to disintegrate. For decades, Gallup has reported that about 9 out of 10 Americans believe God exists (with about 2 in 10 in the most recent survey wave last year saying “probably exists” -- with some level of “doubt”).
However, do you see the flaw in the traditional question? Gallup assumes that Americans agree on what the term “God” means.

Surely many evangelical Protestants who say “yes” to belief in God are thinking of a significantly different God than the one affirmed by Team Member Mel Bricker from California, who writes, “I believe in the Divine as a loving, creative, life-giving, transformative, evolutionary river running through all the universe both within it and the universe within the Divine.”

Beyond what the actual data say, our growing diversity calls into question the whole implication that’s often drawn -- unfairly -- by observers of the Gallup data. You’ll find this sort of reference showing up sometimes in media reports, political speeches or TV talk shows – a casual reference to that 9-out-of-10-belief-in-God data as a good measure of spiritual life in America.

Well, among the flaws in that casual assumption? For example, most Americans don’t have a clue that Buddhism, one of the world’s most important spiritual traditions, is non-theistic. To put it in stark terms: Belief in God isn’t a part of that spiritual system.
Our own Team Members Geri Larkin from Seattle, Washington, and Joseph Naujokas from California are Buddhist – and Naujokas pointed out this growing disconnect with the Gallup-style questions right away. He immediately spotted the traditional questions at the top of Questionnaire No. 1 and prefaced his responses with this note: “Interesting questions, but not exactly unbiased - indicative of an overall pro-theist attitude in American culture.”

Impatience With Old Walls ...

Overall, as a group, we’re saying to the array of figures who have been “religious leaders” among us: Most of us don’t want to throw away religion – far from it! We’re powerfully drawn to the traditions you represent. But, don’t try to own us. Don’t try to count our heads as your own and don’t try to build walled-in fiefdoms with our offerings. Many of our spiritual journeys don’t conform to your neat labels and barriers.

Team Member Shelley Ketcham-Bates, a  high-school teacher in Michigan –- like many Americans –- was stopped in her tracks by the Gallup-standard question “What is your religious preference,” which for decades has generated a neat list of frequently cited religious labels.
“I guess I’m an agnostic Protestant who meditates. Is that one of the categories?” she wrote. She continued: “I don’t feel a church is required in order to pursue a spiritual path, but I do believe that each religion possesses tools and wisdom gathered over the ages, and it’s a lot harder to study and access this amassed wisdom all by yourself. It’s easier to work out when you have a partner at the gym, and the same goes for spiritual work.”
Frankly, we should take our Team on the road to provide regional “listening sessions” for religious leaders to hear things like this. Ketcham-Bates isn’t a religious scholar or clergyperson -– yet, she “gets” the potential power of religious groups -- that is, if they only open up the doors and windows.
She’s probably going to find a home in a Protestant congregation, she writes –- but don’t fence her in. “My spiritual journey has been most enriched, over the last 10 years, by readings in the Buddhist tradition.”

We're Not Anti-religious, so Give Us a Little Spiritual Elbow Room ...

That's right -- Overall, we are not anti-religious. Even the personally non-religious among us are fascinated by religion.
Team Member Anna Wood from New York City, 18 and starting her undergraduate work, is a self-described Atheist. Yet, she’s part of our group here and says, “I am very much interested in religions’ evolutions and roles in society, and I am considering being a religions major.”

Most of us go even further than that -- and we care deeply about our faith in a personal way.

There’s not a Team Member more committed to faith than Sarah Alfaham, 21, of Sylvania, Ohio, who wrote, “I strive to insert Islam into every aspect of my life. Sometimes, I’m not so good at doing so, but I keep trying.” In fact, she doesn’t want to change anything about the pure core of Islam, she writes.

Nevertheless, she’s well aware of the frictions and changing attitudes toward faith that are unfolding all around us. The film with the biggest spiritual impact in her life over the past year was Ismael Ferroukhi’s superb 2004 film, “Le Grand Voyage,” which was just recently released on DVD in the U.S.
Alfaham writes that she appreciates this film because it “depicts a Moroccan immigrant who takes his French-born son with him to the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, or the Hajj, and shows the immense generation gap between them. It is very obvious how many people don’t know how to integrate their cultures together and thus this generation gap occurs.”

Alfraham’s affirmations about her life and the life of faith around her are an eloquent illustration of a faith-filled person (herself) realizing that she’s in the midst of world of enormous cultural change and friction. At age 21 as a Muslim American woman in the heart of the American Rust Belt, she wants to be an influential part of that reconnection of people with the purity of faith.

Those powerful affirmations she has made in our forum here –- coupled with her ability, along the way, to pick up a DVD copy of an otherwise obscure foreign film and bring that spiritual insight into the context of an American life in the Midwest –- this whole process she is describing is Open Source Religion in its purest form.

Weighing Annoyance, Irrelevance -- and Hope ...

Now, Alfaham is not critical of her religious leaders. So, we don’t want to miss the fact that we’re a mosaic, not a unison choir in this team. However -- Overall, our group is saying loudly and clearly to current religious leaders: You are often as much of a source of friction and division as you are a source of spiritual solace and connection. And, if you continue down this path of hierarchical ownership of religion, building barriers between people –- then, you’re risking not just annoyance but an even worse fate: irrelevance.

The poignancy in this era of cultural change is underlined in Baker’s book about cultural change – and shows up over and over again in our inventories: These cultural forces do not necessarily need to be in conflict. There’s a powerful fascination and desire for spiritual resources – and much of the friction and disconnection seems unnecessary and distracting to us.

Team Member Cynthia Hernandez, 24, of Lawrence, Kansas, underlined that “unnecessary and distracting” theme in her questionnaire.

She’s intrigued by some values and principles linked to the spiritual realm. She enjoys some passages from ancient scriptures, appreciates the value of “community” and her biggest spiritual question over the past year has been about the nature of death -– one of the timeless, human spiritual questions. Even the music she enjoys reflects on themes of loss. Broadly speaking, there are suggestions of some timeless spiritual reflections percolating in Hernandez’s life.

But, she doesn’t want anyone intruding unbidden into her private spiritual reflections – certainly not preaching to her about barriers that should be erected in her life. And, she wants full freedom to explore a whole range of culture and media. She enjoys science-fiction and is intrigued by the conversations among an email group of agnostics and atheists.

What’s her advice to religious leaders? “It kind of seems like a lot of religions – and values for those who don’t claim a religion – can be boiled down to the same general theme, but everyone gets so caught up in the details that make them different. It seems like there could be a lot more peace and understanding if less attention was given to differences and more attention was given to similarities.”

And, lest anyone think that this is a voice skewed by Hernandez’s youth, read her questionnaire against that of the Rev. John Emmert, a retired Episcopal priest living in Manheim, Pennsylvania.

After a lifetime as a religious leader himself, what’s his message to organized religion? “I would wish we could have a greater sense of being on the same ‘team,’ or emphasizing a common purpose, of respecting each others’ viewpoints and strengths.” And specifically to religious leaders, he writes: “I would ask them to focus more of their efforts on teaching and mission, less on maintaining the institution. I would also encourage them to speak with more courage and less arrogance.”

And yet – yet – there’s not a more eloquent reflection of a life interwoven with spiritual resources than Emmert’s personal inventory. In another pure reflection of Open Source Religion, Emmert has found in recent years an ecumenical group of clergy who meet bi-weekly “to support one anoher in facing the challenges of parish leadership in the community.”

Yes, the members of that group are religious leaders in their parish contexts -- but they’re meeting across religious boundaries and they’re sharing their lives in an Open Source way in this network. And, of that fellowship, Emmert writes, it has become “one of the most important professional-personal groups I have ever been part of.”

Well – that’s a whole LOT from Wave No. 1 of our work.

CLICK HERE to Read Part 2.