Spirit Scholars

Words of Wisdom from the Memorial for Michigan's Most Famous Atheist

We have been critical of some of the new atheists who have been so strident in their books and public pronouncements, attacking faith in recent months. So, it was surprising and uplifting to find a great deal of compassionate wisdom shared at the memorial service on Friday at the Birmingham Temple for Michigan's most famous atheist: Rabbi Sherwin Wine.

If you missed reports on the memorial, here's an excerpt from  Saturday's Detroit Free Press story:
Nearly 700 friends, family members and followers said farewell in Farmington Hills on Friday to Rabbi Sherwin Wine, the founder of a worldwide movement in Judaism that celebrates human potential but does not believe in God.
When Wine died in a car crash in Morocco on Saturday at age 79, the movement that he founded in 1963, called humanistic Judaism -- which now claims 30,000 adherents -- lost its chief theologian, main spokesman, savvy strategist, compassionate counselor and leading cheerleader.
Friends and colleagues who talked about Wine for more than two hours Friday insisted that he is now gone, not enjoying a heavenly afterlife. But that doesn't mean his life's work is dead, they said, and they used "immortality" to describe his ongoing influence.
Rabbi Tamara Kolton, Wine's successor as head of the Birmingham Temple, told the crowd, "He would say, 'I am not my death. I am my life.'
"Then, he would say, 'You are my legacy.' And then, he'd sign you up to serve on a committee!"
The crowd laughed warmly at the story. ...
The service, which included music and tributes from friends and family, was sprinkled with readings from Wine's sermons and books. One reading was Wine's explanation of immortality: "There is a natural immortality. It finds its source in the 2-billion-year-old chain of life, in the experiences of parents and children, in the sentimental power of human memory. ... We have connections. That is how we are born. That is why we never completely die."

What do we mean about compassionate wisdom? Well, the overall tone of the morning's gathering was one of remarkable hospitality -- and Wine was remembered, almost entirely, for his compassionate work in pastoral care and in reaching out to people who felt alienated by the mainstream religious community.

There were many wise moments in the long service, but two stand out. One came in the  midst of a series of readings from Wine's own writings. It's this line: "Sometimes, the kindest thing we can say about God is that he doesn't exist."

That alone is worth remembering, because it is very close to a key line that Michigan evangelist and author Rob Bell has been using over the past year or so. In confronting the many divine images popular in the media today -- God as Punisher, God as Warrior, God as Football Coach, God as Exclusive Patriot -- Bell often says that he doesn't believe in those divine figures, himself.

Wine's line on the subject is a gem.

The service also included a reading from poet Joseph Brodsky, who we have written about a number of times over the past year. One of the rabbi's nieces read this version of Brodsky's expression about the nature of love from his 1992 book, Watermark. The book ostensibly is about the city of Venice, but -- as John Updike said about the book in the New Yorker -- Brodsky's book-lenth essay really "makes a spot on a globe a window into universal circumstance."

How fascinating to hear Brodsky's words echo at Wine's funeral:

"On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound."

In context in Watermark, the line starts a poetic analysis about our emotion at seeing, and then leaving, overwhelmingly beautiful and graceful places in Venice. But the line itself, as Updike suggests, is a far broader window into Brodsky's reflections on what it means to be truly human in this spiritual universe.

Wine's followers insist that he loved humanity and celebrated human potential. To regard his life's work merely as an argument for atheism is to miss the entire point of his half a century of pastoral work.

May our relationships with our atheist neighbors be this rich and this full of wise hospitality.

A Video Too Good to Miss about Combatting Bigotry in metro Detroit

This video is too good to miss, because it's Good News about Maurice El-Amin, a Cass Tech High School teacher who has coached students to national victories six years in a row -- playing sophisticated math and logic games, including the puzzling brain game Wff 'n' Proof.

The video was filmed, edited and produced by Detroit Free Press multimedia expert Elisha Anderson and was featured Sunday on the Free Press web site. Unfortunately, the link was a little tricky to find and very few people saw this film, which celebrates a creative strategy for breaking down bigotry and empowering young people.

El-Amin also is the son of prominent Detroit Imam Muhammad El-Amin, head of the Muslim Center of Detroit. The younger El-Amin in this video is active with the mosque, himself, and serves as Facilities Manager for the growing Detroit mosque.

Take a look -- the video runs only 2 minutes -- but it captures the vitality of these kids and the creativity of El-Amin's teaching style.

To watch the video, CLICK on the link below.

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

Click here to read Part 1.

Click here to read Part 3.

THIS TEXT you're about to read is Part 2 ...

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.

(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.

Divine Light Pictures Peace Prize Encourages Young Filmmakers

FIRST, Do you want to read more about the Divine Light Pictures project?

Click Here to read about how to buy a copy of their film. OR, you can Click Here to read about the crew's latest interview with Buddhist scholar Geri Larkin. OR, you can can Click Here to read a longer story about the World Sabbath event at Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where the film crew was given the Peace Prize.

THEN, Here is the LATEST NEWS about the Divine Light crew:

The First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor, the home base for this pioneering crew that now has included nearly 30 young people over the past two years, is issuing a News Release about the World Sabbath honor given to this group.

To read that full release, which includes a Web link to see more photographs of the Divine Light crew, click on the link in our left margin under "READ MORE."

ALSO -- If you're curious about this film crew and their work, PLEASE think about attending the February 11 event at Temple Beth El, hosted by the Dove Institute and Beth El. That's a chance to see the 72-minute film in Beth El's beautiful Maas Chapel. See you there!

Rescuing an Artist from his own Celebrity ... to reveal the Triumph of Spirit underneath

Amazing, but true! Here's a fresh example of how easily we're blinded by the glitz of our popular culture to the extent that we can miss even the greatest examples of spiritual triumph!

The news, late this week, of the passing of cartoonist Iwao Takamoto, the creator of the mystery-solving Great Dane, Scooby Doo, is a classic example of such blindness. As we've watched obituaries of the artist filter in across the Internet, the situation has grown so hopeless that we feel we've got to weigh in -- if only so that we all can celebrate a true Triumph of Spirit.

We do not mean to turn Spirit Scholars into an online memorial (after having marked the passing of Robert Altman, Carlo Ponti and now Takamoto), but as this online magazine about spirituality-values-media-and-culture is evolving, one powerful lesson we're discovering is that our global news media is a remarkably poor judge of the spiritual value of a human life.

Takamoto, 81, died Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of a heart attack.

Scooby Doo, named to honor Frank Sinatra's style of singing, is the major achievement of Takamoto's professional life, but he played a role in a number of other memorable projects. Among them was the 1973 animated version of "Charlotte's Web," which introduced millions more American children to the E.B. White classic.

But here's the spiritual measure of this remarkable life, buried in the final paragraphs of the Associated Press obituary of the man: "Born in Los Angeles to parents who had emigrated from Japan, Mr. Takamoto graduated from high school when World War II began. He and his family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in the California desert, where he learned the art of illustration from fellow internees. Despite a lack of formal training, he landed an interview with Walt Disney Studios when he returned to Los Angeles and was hired as an apprentice."

We've checked around the country via online resources, since Thursday, and many newspapers, trimming the obituary to fit it into ever-tightening news columns, simply lopped off that key detail from Takamoto's life. Even our one-time colleague Neely Tucker, a terrific journalist who wrote "An Appreciation" of Takamoto's life for the Washington Post, unfortunately focused on a Baby Boomer's affection for sugary cereals and cartoons on TV rather than the life of the artist himself.

In Neely's "appreciation," he drops in this single line, "He learned illustration from his fellow internees at the Manzanar camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II," almost as if Manzanar was some kind of fine-arts camp -- perhaps a 1940s version of Interlochen. (The black-and-white image of Manzanar at right was taken by Dorothea Lange in 1942. And, as always, you can click on Spirit Scholars images -- and many of them will pop up so you can see them better.)

No one who has read about Manzanar, or who has visited the National Historic Site in the dusty floor of California's Owens' Valley, would have made that error of omission in trying to grapple with the meaning of Takamoto's life.

Having spent two days there in 2004, when the new federal museum at the site finally was getting into full swing, it's hard to recall whether Takamoto was even mentioned in the educational exhibits there. Seems like he would have stuck out in the exhibit, because of the enormous gifts he later would bestow on American families through his light-hearted cartoons as well as his more reflective efforts, like "Charlotte."

In any case, here at Spirit Scholars, we think it's absolutely amazing to think of this major figure in American popular culture -- with such an uplifting gift for storytelling -- having emerged as a very young man from the harsh reality of Japanese internment and Manzanar, specifically.

Click here to jump to the National Parks web site for the camp, if you wish to read more, but the truth of Japanese internment is that American bigotry boiled over after Pearl Harbor in late 1941. Despite any hard evidence that any Japanese-Americans were involved in espionage, American paranoia and anti-Asian bigotry led to the creation of a series of short documentary films shown in theaters nationwide -- warning everyone about the grave dangers of Japanese saboteurs. And, there were more than movies! Newspapers and magazines nationwide joined the chorus!

As the National Park Service puts it concisely: "In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II."

Not only that -- but families had to leave behind all but a handful of suitcases. Families were forced to abandon their pets, their homes, their businesses. Thousands were shipped to the camps as middle class families -- and left the camps after the war virtually penniless.

What's equally amazing at Manzanar are remnants of tiny-but-quite-elaborate concrete water gardens that many of the families helped to build by hand at the cramped site -- to create little oases in the midst of the often blinding sand and overwhelmingly depressing conditions. Whatever teams of landscape architects organized these constructions must have been similar to the circles of artists who helped young Takamoto learn to draw. (The color photo at left shows the Manzanar memorial stone today on the edge of the former camp, decorated regularly with folded paper "peace cranes.")

Looking back, it's easy to dismiss Manzanar as having lasted for only a few years. BUT, the truth is this: Sitting behind the barbed wire in wooden shacks, locked away behind guard towers -- manned by armed guards -- season after season, the future of one's life within this immense and angry American nation must have seemed bleak at best.

We know about life in Manzanar largely because photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams documented the camp in the 1940s. Now, we know about its enduring legacy because of the historical site itself, a handful of books about the camp and, most importantly, the stories of its survivors.

In 2004, while visiting the historical site, we stumbled upon the Yamauchi family, who came away from Manzanar much like Takamoto -- penniless and scarred by anti-Japanese bigotry -- but with a remarkable spirit for building a better life, not just for themselves, but for all Americans and the rest of the world, as well.

Let's close this Spiritual Appreciation of Takamoto's life -- and the legacy of Manzanar -- with the final paragraphs of the Free Press story from 2004 about our experiences with the Yamauchis. (The two final photos show the family, first, inside the museum and, then, at the dusty site that once held a wooden shack.)

    Among the pilgrims to the National Historic Site is Yasuko Yamauchi, 67, of El Toro, Calif., who came back recently to show her granddaughter, 12-year-old Rachel Stevens of Irvine, Calif., where her family was imprisoned in 1942.
    "I was 5 when they sent us here," Yamauchi told the girl as they searched for her name on the vast memorial mural that lists all 11,000 prisoners.
    "Look! There I am!" Yamauchi cried. "And there are my dad and my mom."
    For a moment, they just looked at the names, silently. "When they came for us, my father was a farmer and he was ready to harvest the celery crop, but it was never harvested," Yamauchi finally said.
    Later, the older woman guided the girl outside the museum and across the parched earth to the site where their family's hut once stood. "And here is where we lived. I was just a little girl. All I remember is the constant wind that blew through this valley and the calling of distant trains. I'd lay there at night in my bed and dream of those trains. I wondered: When can I leave this valley like that train?"
    Rachel looked at the ground for a time. "I feel sorry," she said.

    But feeling sorry wasn't the point of this journey, her grandmother and her grandfather, Harry Yamauchi, told her. The point was to preserve the memory and to let it shape the future.
    During the war, Harry Yamauchi's family lived in Hawaii, where they also faced bigotry and detention. "Looking back, people were so silly to treat us that way," he said. "Because, the truth is that we were all-American and loved this country. Our minds were nowhere near Japan. But that's not how they treated us."
    At age 74, he is retired after 35 years as a middle school teacher in El Toro, so offering lessons is a lifelong passion. "What do we learn from this place? Gosh, that the war years were difficult! But we are not bitter now. That's not the importance of this.
    "What's important is to realize that, as Americans, we should be able to talk about even the most painful things that have happened to us," he said. "Why should we fear that? It's good for us to talk. That's what being an American should be all about."

Exploring a Religious Goldmine, but Watch Out: You May Get Lost in this Maze of Data

We've found a Gold Mine -- tons of fascinating data about religious life in America, courtesy of the fine professionals at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, part of the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

The Web site is the pet project of Dr. Scott Thumma, one of the longtime Hartford scholars, who you can read about by clicking on his Bio page within the larger site.

Basically, if you're a religious professional, or a scholar studying religion, or a writer wading into these exceedingly deep waters, Scott has organized some wonderful links here. Word of Warning: Once you get started on Scott's site, you'd better set an alarm for yourself, because you're likely to spend a whole lot of time.

Also, Scott's is the first one to admit that this whole vast web site that he has created is a Work in Progress. For example, if you click into the section on Mega-Churches -- we know and Scott knows -- that there are flaws in this section of his site. A lot of big, independent churches are virtually kingdoms unto themselves and getting them to report data consistently and accurately is a huge challenge for scholars and writers. But the Hartford list is impressively broad and detailed, despite occasional gaps and flaws.

Taken as a whole, this site is a wonderful offering to all of us, arranged clearly and logically for quick reference.

The main portal is at hirr.hartsem.edu Or, Click here to jump there immediately (but, please, if you're leaving us at this point, do remember to come back and visit Spirit Scholars regularly).

One fascinating example is the first link on the site: Facts on Church Growth. Click here to check out that page. In addition to suggestions that are fairly obvious, Hartford has some intriguing findings here. For instance: "Congregations located in new suburbs are more likely to experience growth. But surprisingly the second best area for growth is the downtown of metropolitan areas."

Or how about this one: "While most congregations in America are composed of a single racial/ethnic group, those that are multi-racial are most likely to have experienced strong growth in worship attendance."

Frankly, though, most of us are likely to get hooked by the data on Hartford's Fast Facts about American Religion section. One of the true gems in this portion of the Web site is Hartford's data on "how much pastors are paid" nationally. Curious? Don't be bashful. Click here to take a look.

You'll have to dig around a little bit on this enormous site to find the niches that interest you most -- and, we'll bet that, if you're a regular at Spirit Scholars, you're going to find yourselves hooked on Hartford's site almost immediately. For example, clicking on the basic link to "Congregational" information isn't all that exciting. But, once you dig around and discover the sub-page of "Article" links -- you'll be lost for quite a while.

Now, remember, that there are flaws and limitations in the site -- and it's constantly undergoing updates. For example, click on the Article link to the issue of "interfaith relations" and you'll find that much of the material here is pre-Nine-Eleven information. That's not too helpful at the moment -- five years after such a culturally cataclysic event. Nevertheless, overall, this is a fasincating collection of stuff to consider.

We especially appreciate the alphabetical links to Official Denominational Web Sites. Click here to check it out. Yes, you can find a broken link or two on the page -- but we're not aware of too many other places online where such an in-depth, well-organized list of these key links can be found.

One of the real treasure troves on the site is the portal to Sociology of Religion. Click here to check out that page. If you're a scholar or writer focusing on this general field, you've either found this site already -- or you'll have it Bookmarked as soon as you take a look.

So, overall -- a Huge Salute to Dr. Scott Thumma, a true Spirit Scholar. If you've got thoughts about Hartford's site, you can leave a Comment here, or there are various places on Hartford's own site to express yourself (especially through their Contact Us page) -- or drop us an email to share your thoughts.

Happy THANKSGIVING!

Knowing Spirit Scholars' affection for cinema, a friend asked if he could borrow a sack of films on DVD to enjoy with his family over the holiday weekend. He and his wife recently made a Catholic pilgrimage to Rome and they wanted "All Italian Cinema." So, we fixed them up with the likes of Fellini's "Amarcord" and a few other classics.

Their taste was most fortunate, because the sad truth is: Hollywood hasn't done much with Thanksgiving.

A search of the mighty IMDB database turns up almost nothing in a century of cinema that could be called a bona fide, feature-length Thanksgiving classic. The best film we can recommend, in fact, is the quirky "Home for the Holidays," by Jodie Foster. If you haven't seen it, the plot is a typical tale of odd-ball relatives trying to bridge long-running family feuds to enjoy a holiday reunion. Given Foster's wise hand at the helm, it's a cut way above "National Lampoon" satires, but it's not exactly Shakespeare.

Fortunately, Encyclopedia Britannica Online weighed in with some fascinating trivia today.

For instance: The colonists who held the original Thanksgiving feast four centuries ago almost certainly ate more geese and ducks than turkey. And when the Wampanogs showed up, scaring the colonists out of their socks at first, the menu expanded. The Indians most likely added eels and shellfish.

And here's a feminist note: Everybody we've talked to casually credits President Lincoln with formalizing the holiday on Oct. 3, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. What they frequently forget to mention, Britannica reports, is that there was a woman behind this terrific idea.

  She was Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of the popular magazine called "Godey's Lady's Book." She lobbied Lincoln until the president agreed that this idea probably had "legs," as we say now in marketing. Hale's other claim to fame? As a poet, she penned the famous "Mary Had a Little Lamb" way back in 1830.

There truly is a Web site for every occasion and, today, we ran across Thanksgiving World, a festive little site stuffed with late-November wisdom. The best quote spotted on the site? It was from songwriter Irving Berlin: "Got no checkbooks! Got no banks! Still I'd like to express my thanks: I got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night." Unfortunately, we can't find the song from which this little morsel was plucked. Perhaps one of our readers will spot it and add a Comment or Email us the musical origin.

But we'll close this little holiday note with an excerpt from the lengthy Thanksgiving message emailed out to writers nationwide by Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine. He offers this wise reminder:

In my daily life, I'm often distracted from noticing the marvels and miracles that surround me. There is so much to accomplish, so many hurdles to jump, so much that I feel needs attending. I sometimes get so involved in the immediate tasks that I lose sight of the larger amazing realities that abound in my life.

That danger lurks for this Thanksgiving? I'll become immersed in the details, the event of it, the sharing of it, and the loneliness of it, the disappointments at moments of potential closeness not fully actualized, as well as in the moments of joyous connection to my immediate friends and family, and that I'll not take the time for real celebration.

So, CELEBRATE! Or, if you have -- and want to reflect with our Quirky Crew here at Spirit Scholars to unwind and expand your horizons -- then, HEY, welcome aboard and ... READ ON!

Crowdsourcing IV: Whose Crowd? Peering into an Invisible Sea of Souls

 WE CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW that the first three Spirit Scholars articles on Crowdsourcing are prompting many of us to begin exploring this enormously important movement that will reshape our spiritual communities, whether we like it or not.

Here are just a few of the comments that readers have Emailed back to us:

"I think you have just identified a cultural tsunami."
-- Zen Buddhist monk and author Geri Larkin

"The Crowdsourcing concept is fascinating. Thank you … for bringing a variety of seemingly disparate threads together, culminating in the present and projections for the future."
-- Shelley Bates, high school Humanities teacher

"As far as religion is concerned ... I wonder how this will affect those teaching and studying in seminaries. Does it suggest that seminary education needs a more external component, bringing the crowd into the seminary classroom? Is the crowd as important as analyzing the sacred texts and understanding church history?"
-- Dennis Archambault, writer, communications expert

NOW, we draw this four-part series to a close with the most troubling question of all about our cultural shift toward Crowdsourcing.

The question is: Whose Crowd?

And, just as we weren’t alone here at Spirit Scholars in posing the first three questions – about the origins of the term, about the prophetic voices already trying to shape the movement of the crowd and about the churches that already are stumbling toward  crowdsourcing – we are not alone in raising this final, almost apocalyptic question.

The cultural markers are springing up everywhere that the real question about Crowdsourcing is how we define our Crowd.

This query yawns like an abyss before us at the end of this discussion, because, for more than a century now, the lifeblood of American culture has been a breathless pursuit of the ever-changing boundary between the “in crowd” and the “out.”

In this new millennium, it is almost impossible to square this American desire to see ourselves as part of a privileged set -- with Jesus’ preaching or similarly provocative preaching by the Prophet Muhammad or the Buddha. OR, how could we possibly square our ideas about privilege, ownership and an "in crowd" with those radically egalitarian ancient Jewish sages who came up with such mind-bogglingly utopian concepts as “Jubilee Year,” a 50-year cycle that ends with the cancelation of debts, the freeing of slaves and the redistribution of private property among the people.

All of these wise voices echo down through the centuries, crying out that a spiritually healthy crowd MUST include everyone, especially society’s outcasts.

In fact, within the Christian tradition, that's how Jesus announced his ministry to the followers of his cousin, John the Baptist, echoing the message of the ancient prophet Isaiah. If you don't recall the scene, check out the 7th Chapter of Luke.

It’s not a value unique to Christianity, though. It's impossible to imagine Buddhism without this core value. The Lalitavistara Sutra, a nearly 2,000-year-old compilation of Gautama Buddha's life, declares that, along with enlightenment, what shone most brightly from his life was "the blind regained their sight, the deaf once more could hear, the lame once again had perfect limbs, the poor found riches and prisoners were delivered from their bonds." If you're familiar with Luke 7 (or Isaiah for that matter), then these words sound remarkably familiar.

How stunning it is, then, to find many Western Christians performing theological gymnastics that seek to preserve our exclusive tightrope of privilege. Many of us like to call these privileges our “blessings.” And, if you haven't caught the drift of this article already, then simply buy a copy of Rob Bell’s Nooma, No. 13, “Rich,” for 11 unforgettable minutes in which Bell deconstructs the tragedy of such spiritual claims to wealth.

But, here’s the NEWS: The Spirit Scholars and the Rob Bells of this world are not alone, if we have eyes to see all of the prophets wandering among us – pointing us toward this question: Whose Crowd?

Want to see this question rattling through the American cultural architecture right this moment?

Go see Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's deeply troubling new movie, "Babel," which tells stories of personal tragedy in three seemingly unconnected corners of the Earth: the remote mountains of Morocco, the busy streets of Japan and the impoverished villages of Mexico.

What is so fascinating about this film is that it is NOT a typical third-world diatribe against callous Americans. In fact, Americans wind up as compassionate victims for the most part. Instead, "Babel" is about the tragic disconnections that are endemic in all of our global cultures. In one third of the film, a deaf Japanese girl finds herself driven toward suicidal dispair as she tries to survive in Japan's high-powered audio culture. In another third of the film, a Moroccan peasant's inability to communicate with Moroccan police leads to catastrophe. And, in the other third, a traditional, middle-aged Mexican woman can't communicate with a rebellious Mexican youth who winds up driving her to the brink of tragedy.

At one point in the Japanese portion of the film, the deaf girl is humiliated by a group of young men in a club and she retreats to the shelter of several deaf friends, signing out her exasperation about the heartless guys. "They look at us like monsters!" she says to her friends.

But, hey, that's only a tip of the real Monster's toe.

Simply flip open the current issue of The New Yorker (the one with President Bush on the cover looking embarassed). Yes, we're not kidding. We're talking about prophetic voices in the New Yorker, that bastion of Upper-Crust Cool. Yes, we understand the irony: For generations now, intellectually aspiring readers could establish their social altitude by simply mentioning in casual conversation, “Did you read in this week’s 'Talk of the Town' …”

However, for quite some time now, the editors in Manhattan has been dropping disturbingly subversive hints that this definitely is NOT your Grandfather’s New Yorker. Their series of Letters from Baghdad, for instance, served for a couple of years as a terribly important window into the human chaos we were wreaking in Iraq.

Now, in the current issue, among the very New Yorker-ish essays on cosmetic surgery, Virginia Woolf’s husband Leonard, a hot new Icelandic sculptor and Nicole Kidman’s “take” on Diane Arbus – all of them mainstays of New Yorker culture – there is One Enormous Double-Page Full-Color Photograph of a Slum.

Therein lies the real Monster: the real Crowd.

Writer George Packer provides virtually a primer on the growth of global Mega-Cities. One of the best books he recommends in his story is Mike Davis' "Planet of Slums" (see the mini-review in the upper-right corner of this page). In his book, Davis charts what may be the most important social development of the past 50 years: the evolution of cities around the world with more than 10 million people, most of which are intertwined with vast slums and offer almost no hope of permanence. No permanent land. No permanent role in a society. No permanent identity.

Davis writes: "The squatter is still the major human symbol, whether as victim or hero, of the Third World city." Davis uses the word "still," because for years many American activists liked to celebrate squatters as brave, urban pioneers.

HERE's the shocking news that Davis brings in his book: It's Davis' conclusion that even the identity of "the squatter" is endangered! Unused stretches of urban landscape are vanishing around the world and squatters' slums are vanishing beneath the relentless blades of developers' bulldozers.

Do you see the distressing implication emerging? If more than 1 billion of our spiritual brothers and sisters are sinking, nameless and faceless, in these bottomless slums, then how can we as Americans make any claim to compassionate connections with the Crowd?

  The New Yorker zeroes in on this very point. Armed with data from Davis and other scholars, Packer heads into the smokey, steaming slums that are home to 15 million souls in Lagos, Nigeria. If you care about these issues, you need to read Packer's amazing story -- and see the full scope of the photography by Samantha Appleton. (To whet your appetite to go read the original, we have included only a few small details from Appleton's canvas-sized photos with this article.)

IN THE END, Packer takes us to the heart of the apocalyptic abyss: One of the world's largest garbage dumps, situated in the heart of Lagos with the overwhelming stench of burning filth and maze-like walls of refuse that stand as tall as five-story buildings. Within this most precarious of all neighborhoods, thousands of trash pickers have settled themselves, exporting hand-picked bags of raw materials to support their meager, tragically fleeting lives.

Foreigners? Outcasts? People beyond our help? People so desperate that we need not think about their part of the Crowd?

No, Packer writes in aching eloquence: Souls.

Toward the end of Packer's long article, we discover that, in the very heart of this abominable landscape, the pickers "have built a mosque and a church and at Christmas they celebrate by decorating their shacks."

Did a shiver just run up your spine as you read that line? I certainly felt a shiver as I came to that moment in Packer's story. They've built a little church in the toxic wasteland? And CHRISTMAS decorations in homes where people are dying of poverty? That's got to strike at our deepest cultural nerves in America.

We ask again: Whose crowd? And answer: It's our crowd! All of us are souls within it!

Packer is a realist. He doesn't think there's much hope that we'll ever see these folks as part of our spiritual body, our crowd. His final lines are: "The really disturbing thing about Lagos' pickers and venders is that their lives have essentially nothing to do with ours. They scavenge an existence beyond the margins of macro-economics. They are, in the harsh terms of globalization, superfluous."

Are they? That's the question Brad Pitt wrestles with in "Babel" and that we need to wrestle with as people of faith.

The second chapter of the Letter of James puts it this way (and you can find similarly head-snapping indictments in other ancient scriptures): "My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Have a seat here, please,' while to the one who is poor you say, 'Stand there,' or, 'Sit at my feet,' have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. … You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors."

OUCH! From "blessed" to "convicted" in the turning of a few pages of Holy Writ.

Or, to summarize the epistle of James (and Jesus' teachings for that matter): We're all one crowd -- and OUR lives depend upon accepting that responsibility.

Now, you can call us hopelessly idealistic here at Spirit Scholars. And, we all can make fun of the rich celebrities who are trying their best to act like modern-day prophets among us. It's so easy to do.

Just flip to the front of that same, current New Yorker magazine and you'll find a full-page advertisement for the celebrity-studded nonprofit movement, Keep a Child Alive. It's an arresting photo of the rock star Sting, declaring simply: "I Am an African."

Funny, huh? A rock star as a spiritual sage?

But, therein may lie the one prophetic hope of Crowdsourcing, it seems to us: Seeing finally that each of us is responsible for this vast, global family -- this crowd -- that our spiritual roots have thrust upon us.

But, as always, tell us what you think. Post a Comment or send us an Email. The truth is that this discussion is only beginning.

Poised precariously at the dawn of a new millennium, this may be the discussion that defines our future as a human family.

Crowdsourcing III: The Congregation from Willow Creek to Wild Men

What does a Crowdsourced Congregation look like? If "Crowdsourcing" truly is the name of the Reformation rattling through America's spiritual landscape, then that's a crucial question.

It’s easier to start with a negative form of the query: What doesn’t it look like? That’s easier to answer, because it doesn’t look like most of the hierarchical denominations we’ve inherited; and it doesn’t look like most of the big Pentecostal churches, which tend to turn themselves into spiritually anointed fiefdoms led by the ruling preachers whose hands are raised behind the pulpit—and, finally—here’s some provocative news, we think—it doesn’t look like the Seeker Church.

Now, anyone who has been carefully watching this niche in American religion knows that the Seeker pioneers already are modifying the way they talk about this popular evangelical parlor trick of the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Seeker Church marketing concept, fueled by the enormous success of Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, rested on the assumption that those Baby Boomers who were turned off by organized religion, nevertheless were spiritual “Seekers.” Behind this movement were eager young evangelists cut in the mold of Willow Creek's Bill Hybels (above). Most of these evangelists had never really rejected the church themselves, and they had a real passion to bring their Boomer compatriots back to Jesus. Following Hybels' lead, they figured out that they could reconnect with their wayward brothers and sisters by presenting, on Sunday mornings, an entertaining religious stage show of light-rock music, comedy, drama, colorful images and casual sermons about real life. Once hooked on the Sunday shows, the targeted Seekers then would move inward toward Bible study groups and, in many Seeker Churches, toward full membership in the “real” congregation that often met mid-week.

These churches haven’t disappeared. Willow Creek continues to draw more than 17,000 people each weekend, but the jargon used in this kind of church already is changing from “Seeker Church” to phrases like “Seeker Sensitive,” which sounds a little more compassionate, or even “Purpose Driven,” borrowing the phrase from Rick Warren’s hugely popular book. For those outside the movement who haven’t been watching Willow Creek or Warren’s immense Saddleback too closely in recent years, take a fresh look and you'll find: Both churches now are looking much more like denominations than cutting-edge pioneers. They’ve both formed vast, loose associations around the world, exporting their marketing techniques, musical scores, theatrical scripts and books. Willow Creek's signature event each year is its Leadership Summit, beamed live around the world.

At the core, "Leadership" is the key at the gigantic Seeker Churches. They're run by anointed ministry teams, still focused on luring the unwashed … errr, unbaptized … into America’s evangelical mainstream.

So, what would happen if a church truly were Crowdsourced? And we hasten to add that this isn’t a heretical concept. The idea of the Divine Spirit manifesting itself and speaking through the discernment of an entire community is as old as rabbinic Judaism and the foundations of the Jewish-Christian movement 2,000 years ago. In different forms, it also remains a key element in Orthodox Christianity, where national identity is bound up in religious tradition, and in smaller movements like the Quakers and the Shakers, as well.

But let’s get specific for a moment! What might this new kind of church look like?

Would a Crowdsourced Church look like Oake Pointe Church in Novi, Michigan, which has grown from 60 founders of the church in 1997 to the weekly crowd of 2,000 who attend services now? The church borrows from the Willow Creek model and even promotes Willow Creek materials on its Web site. At first glance, it walks, talks and squawks like a Seeker Church, right down to the light-rock music, theater-style sanctuary, casually dressed clergy and a youth minister sporting a baseball cap. But, I had a long talk with the Rev. Bob Shirock, the senior pastor, on the church’s Grand Opening weekend in October and Shirock is exploring a model of church that differs sharply from the Seekers.

“I was told that I had to tone down what we do on Sunday mornings here and draw in seekers and make them feel comfortable—don’t turn them off—and then get to the substantial stuff later,” Shirock said. “But I don’t think we have to separate ourselves that way.”

So at weekend worship, sometimes, Shirock preaches about everyday issues in his members’ lives. But, often, Shirock digs into substantial evangelical theology and biblical analysis, occasionally preaching his way through heavy-duty sermon series that run for weeks.

Actually, it’s not so much what Shirock says from the pulpit that may make his church a Crowdsourced model. His innovation seems to lie in the way he brings people together behind the scenes to shape the church. While he’s preaching, for instance, he has a group of lay people who volunteer to go back stage, out of view from the rest of the congregation, and pray for him until he’s done speaking. This concern also lies in the twice-a-month, congregation-wide prayer meetings he holds to shape the church’s ministries. It’s in the church’s attention to organizing small groups, fueled by a full-time Pastor of Cell Groups. It’s in the church’s outreach to local high schools to welcome community events into the gorgeous, new, $15-million building.

But here’s the other edge of the Crowdsourced sword: If Shirock and his team continue to take the crowd’s prayerful discernment seriously, then how do they prevent the crowd from prayerfully discerning that what they really want is a spiritually satisfying suburban country club?

OR – would a Crowdsourced Church look like the Rev. Rob Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, where 11,000 flock each Sunday? Bell’s ministry team puts as little money as possible into its enormous building, which originally was a shopping center and still looks pretty much like ... well, like a shopping center. It's not a pretty sight. Instead, Mars Hill squeezes as much money as possible out of its budget to fuel missions and fund a whole host of professional missions teams that keep springing up from the Mars Hill community.

In casual conversation, Bell loves nothing more than to rattle off the latest “news” he has just learned about what volunteers from his church are doing around the world – without his knowledge, let alone his approval. He loves to say, “That’s what a Christian community should be: Pople just getting up and getting on with helping other people because they’re called to do it, not because somebody tells them they need to do it. I don’t know about half the things Mars Hill is doing until after they’re done and people are trying to thank us.”

But here’s the other edge of the Crowdsourced sword: How does Bell keep his amoeba of ministry from dissipating itself in a hundred directions until the body of Mars Hill simply fades away? (By the way, Bell just recently announced that he plans to explore the whole concept of “Church” at a two-day conference at Mars Hill, 3501 Fairlanes Avenue SW, Grandville, MI 49418. Click here to read more about it or to register, if you care to go.)

OR – would a Crowdsourced Church be more like Burning Man? Emblazoned across The New York Times’ “SundayStyles” section this week is “Buning Man Spreads Its Flame: From the Nevada Desert to Los Angeles, New York and Oregon, the Burming Man Trip Continues Long After the Festival Ends.”

Two years ago, while crossing North America for the Detroit Free Press, I spent a couple of days camping out in this truly stunning utopian experiment in the remote, dusty desert of Nevada. Now two decades into the experiment, 40,000 people spend a huge amount of money to travel to the desert, build creative encampments and explore the outer boundaries of social and spiritual interaction. This truly is Crowdsourced spirituality on a scale that rivals Cecil B. DeMille. But, the city--and it really is a carefully planned and designed city--is unlike any other city on the planet. For instance, money can only be used at Burning Man to purchase ice and—what else? Fresh-brewed coffee, of course. Each encampment is challenged to think of a creative (and often spiritual) currency that the members of the camps can produce and give away, for free, to the other residents of this desert utopia.

Often, this takes the form of artwork—from gigantic, fantastical installations to inspire visitors’ reflections--to small items like tiny ceramic bowls that visitors can decorate with glazes and fire in a communal kiln. Or, this might take the form of music. Many camps are like mini-music festivals from hard rock to chamber music to esoteric jazz. Or, this spiritual currency might rise up into the shape of a temple like the half-mile-long, three-story wooden temple built for the 2004 Burning Man (shown at right). Thousands of visitors voluntarily built the temple, then used it as an immense memorial pyre by leaving heartfelt epitaphs and symbolic gifts for fallen friends and loved ones—all consumed in the final flames that end each year’s Burning Man festival.

But here’s the other edge of the Crowdsourced sword: Reading the New York Times overview of “Burner” culture on Sunday, the Times writer veered toward an acidic scouring of the Pagan-wannabes who also are an essential part of Burning Man each year. This is, after all, an ultimate, no-holds-barred, utopian experiment in Crowdsourced culture each year and not all of that culture is exactly spiritual.

The Times writer, Julia Chaplin, quoted one Burner she encountered, who “dressed like a Goth minotaur,” called himself DJ Wolfie, and, when asked to explain why he was carrying the gospel of the Burners to communities far from the Nevada desert, told her frankly, “We want to preserve the vibe. You know, so women can dance topless and not get harassed.”

That's not exactly a movement of the ... the Spirit, hmmm? But, the question about the future shape of Crowdsourced congregations is a crucial one and the wild experiments in the Nevada desert are a part of that search for Crowdsourced answers.

Whether we're active in a house of worship or not, this is a huge question for America, because congregations are America’s spiritual skeleton. There are far more houses of worship in the U.S. than Post Offices, Wallmarts and McDonald’s put together. So, if Crowdsourcing truly is the name of this Reformation, it’s worth considering what a Crowdsourced Congregation will look like when this Reformation reaches its zenith -– or its nadir.

Tell us what you think, either by posting a Comment (click below) or by sending us an Email. And, please: Stay Tuned for the fourth and final chapter in this series, coming early this week: “Crowdsourcing IV: Whose crowd?”