Steve Waldman: March 2009 Archives

Joseph is going to Egypt.

Joseph and Pharaoh are now friends.

Elijah is a bit tipsy, but off to a good start. 30,000 households down, and its only 6:30!

Read the whole thing: Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah

This post had earlier included excerpts from an article by Sister Mary Mebane, a Roman Catholic nun who practices Reiki in California. I had ppublished some of her writings, in which she described the compatibility of Reiki and Christian practice, after the Catholic Bishops issued a report instructing Cahtolic institutions to stop teaching Reiki.

On April 4, she asked me to remove the article from Beliefnet. She did not say whether it was related to the Bishops instruction.

This link to another essay from Sister Mebane appears to be still working.

Is it possible to have a non-controversial two hour documentary about Jerusalem?

PBS seems to have achieved that goal, without making it boring, with "Jerusalem: Center of the World." Correspondent Ray Suarez and producer Andrew Goldberg raced through 4,000 years of history without managing to infuriate anyone. (It helps that they pretty much skipped over the controversies of the last 50 years). "I'm a religious guy and perfectly happy to tell anyone who asks," Suarez told me. "But I had to make sure I didn't have my thumb on the scale."

They offer little in the way of provocative revisionist history, sticking mostly to what the holy books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam claim. To make up for that familiar history/lore, they offer us a visually captivating High Definition experience using rarely seen footage -- including inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock. (The photo below is the rock from which Mohammed, according to Islamic tradition, took flight to heaven). The net result is captivating.

If there's one figure who comes off better than others it's Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who ejected Christian crusaders from Jerusalem in 1187 but offered them greater freedom than Christians had to Muslims. What can modern leaders learn from Saladin? "There is a way that everyone in religious terms can have the Jerusalem they need," Suarez says. The key ingredients to the formula: "access, peace and a little space for each other."

Suarez says he also came to understand more viscerally that people in Jerusalem believe they are fighting not only for themselves for invisible hordes of others who believ ein the idea of Jerusalem. "There are people with an emotional connection to Jerusalem who will never see the place.... That emotional tug makes it very difficult to form a compromise on the ground...they have unasked for constituencies across the planet."

The special airs Wednesday, April 1 at 9 pm ET/PT.

A reader who says she's a Reiki practitioner disputes the Catholic Bishops' contention that, while Christian prayer calls on the divine, Reiki amounts to mere human manipulation of the body:

"I will tell you, I have asked God for a reiki attunement and God delivered. God loves you and when you ask for something to help others, God will bless you with it.... I will tell you from experience, the deeper and harder you pray from the heart while using reiki to help someone, the stronger the strength of the energy.

If reiki is "supersitition" why does the flow and strength increase with compassionate love? Prayer is asking for Love from the Divine. Reiki is channeling Love energy from the Divine Source."

Religion News Service reports:

The U.S. Catholic Bishops said Thursday (March 26) that Catholic chaplains, health care facilities and retreat centers should not promote or support Reiki therapy, a Japanese alternative healing practice.

Reiki "finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief," the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Doctrine said in six pages of guidelines.

"For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems," said the committee, which is chaired by Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn.

Practitioners believe that a salutary life energy flows through the body and fosters well-being, the center said. The energy is often transmitted through experienced Reiki practitioners who lightly touch or place their hands above the patient's body....

The Japanese practice differs from Christian faith healing because "the healing power is at human disposal," the bishops said. In contrast, "for Christians the access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Savior."...

"A Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition," the bishops said.

So what do we make of the evidence that at least some of the beneficial effects of prayer come from the human process -- the centering, the sense of calm -- rather than God's intercession? Do people of faith by necessity have to denounce that kind of "man-made" spiritual effect?

I had figured that one could believe in both simultaneously.

The full document below the jump:

On my wall I have a copy of an old fashioned Senate roll call sheet - the handwritten tally from the clerk recording the passage of the original law creating AmeriCorps in 1993. There were hash marks next to just...

The main reason young evangelicals are much more supportive of gay rights than their parents: they know gays. And that will be ever more true as more Christian gays go public....

Sarah Palin told a group of Alaska Republicans last week about preparing to go on stage for the vice presidential debate. "So I'm looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little...

A prosecutor in northeastern Pennsylvania has threatened students with jail time if they didn't attend classes on the dangers of sexting (sending nude pictures of yourself or friends on your cell phones), The New York Times reports. A few students...

Cathy Grossman and Jack Gillum at USA Today have crunched the numbers and found that gay marriage is getting most traction in states where The Nones (i.e. people who have no religious affiliation) are strongest....

I'm occasionally described as an "entrepreneurial risk taker" because I left my fancy job in journalism to start Beliefnet in 1999. Though I love the sound of it, I've never felt it was really accurate. The reason: I always knew...

I'm on vacation from March 19-24. I'm very fortunate to have Mark Silk as guest host. A former religion reporter, Mark has in recent years run the Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion and Public Life at Trinity...

The debate over Guantanamo usually slides immediately into the moral dilemma of whether it's permissible to abuse or "torture terrorists." It's an important debate but it obscures a basic flaw: many of them weren't terrorists. The moral contours become a...

AIDS, Pope Benedict XVI told reporters, "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." It's an interesting contrast with Rick Warren's approach. The...

My modest proposal on gay marriage has elicited some fascinating reaction. (I suggested religious conservatives should endorse gay marriage if gays back an agenda to reduce the divorce rate) Religious conservatives have been uncharacteristically quiet. Crickets. Stay tuned. The reaction...

Last year I visited the Hall of Presidents at Disney World, home of the walking, talking animatronic presidents. In the anteroom where they hold you before the show starts, they had paintings of all the important early presidents. There was...

Earlier this week I watched Irena's Vow, a powerful play based on the true story of a Polish woman, Irena Gut, who hid a dozen Jews during the war, including six in the basement of a high-level German officer. A...

Afghanistan sentenced a journalist to 20 years in prison for posting an article about women and Islam. In Virginia, the crime for blasphemy: plunging a hot iron through the tongue of the offender. (For more: Founding Faith) Of course the...

Again, I don't mean to pick on poor Bristol but her breakup is one of those moments that catalyze important debates. In another post, I probed under what circumstances an unmarried, teen mother ought to consider putting a baby up...

We have growing numbers of unemployed journalsits. We have zillions of dollars being spent by the federal government, a recipe for mismanagement. How about we employ some of these out of work journalists to evaluate and monitor the prorams to...

In response to my post asking whether Bristol Palin should have considered putting the baby up for adoption, Gerard Nadal writes in the comment box: The Palins are an intact intergenerational family of some means who welcome their newest member....

"It kind of just happened," a source close to the couple told PEOPLE. "I thought they would stick it out. But I think they can work together to raise Tripp." When Sarah Palin announced the pregnancy of her daughter, she...

Folks on the religious left have long argued that a budget is a "moral document." It reflects powerful value judgments about priorities and national commitments. Given the massive changes in President Barack Obama's spending plan -- shifting resources from the...

Oh dear. The head of the Republican Naitonal Committee, Michael Steele, appears to support a woman's right to choose on abortion: In an interview witrh GQ, he says: Steele: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life or...

The Wall Street Journal excerpts a new book revealing that, based on recently released White House records, Ronald Reagan tried to convert Soviety leader Michael Gorbachev. In a private meeting, Reagan praised Gorbachev for providing more religious freedom and urged...

The big American Religious Identification Survey that came out yesterday reported that 12% of the population believe in a higher power but not a personal God. So there are more Deists than Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists combined. Would...

An 18-year-old Cincinnatti teen named Jessica Logan committed suicide after her ex-boyfriend emailed around naked cell phone photos of her. The AOL teen site Lemondrop reports: Logan was harassed daily by other girls calling her "slut" and "whore" and throwing...

The paperback edition of my book, Founding Faith, comes out this week. It makes a perfect Ides of March present! Buy it here. I thought I'd use the anniversary to reflect a bit on the reaction the book has gotten....

Jews who feared that Bernard Madoff was making their tribe seem uniquely culpable for the financial immorality, can relax: Bloomberg today reports that Allen Stanford used his Baptist ties to promote his scam....

The blockbuster new American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College reports that the fastest growing "faith group" is the one claiming "no religion." (Full study here.) Look at USA Today's stunning visual depiction of the flight from Catholicism and "Other...

In a brief post the other day, I made a modest proposal: gay activists should offer a deal to opponents of gay marriage: if you support gay marriage, we'll support efforts to reduce the divorce rate. I wanted to unpack...

It's fair game to make fun of nervous nellies who protect their kids too much but I just got an email passalong from a relative that has me seething. The full email is after the jump but it's basically a...

Some tips for parents trying to help a child through the loss of a pet. Most interesting: don't use euphemisms like "God took Buffy to heaven." Experts Allen and Linda Anderson say "these ways of describing death can be confusing...

Gay marriage leads to polygamy which leads to man-on-dog marraige which leads to some very awkward sex with robots. The Washington Monthly mocks the latest slippery slope argument on gay marriage. Reminds me of an idea, though. If gay marriage...

Associated Press reports: Retired barber Joe Godlewski says he was inspired by television chefs who repeatedly recommended kosher salt in recipes. "I said, 'What the heck's the matter with Christian salt?' More here...

I'm proud to announce that one of the best religion bloggers on the internet, Amy Welborn, has begun writing for Beliefnet. When Amy and I first started discussing her hanging her shingle here, she was full of ideas about politics...

Dan Gilgoff of US News suggests that Chuck Colson and Mike Huckabee are overreacting from the right Mark Silk suggests that author Susan Jacoby is overreacting from the left....

I was struck that Sarah Palin did so poorly in the straw poll of conservatives (13%, tied with Ron Paul) at the big conservative confab this weekend. It may be that participants were just annoyed that she didn't show up...

Bruce Reed and John Bridgeland, the heads of Domestic Policy for Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush, respectively, issued a report today highlighting a looming crisis in the charitable sector: "More than 14 million Americans - 11 percent of American workers...

Few religious rituals prompt more water cooler conversation than the idea of giving up something for Lent. Fasting for Lent originally was meant to profoundly connect Christians to Jesus's struggle against temptation from the Devil. Some early church fathers specifically...

An interesting set of opeds in the New York Times from two important religious leaders, arguing opposite sides of the question: is it a good idea for the International Criminal Court to arrest Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war...

Cathy Grossman of USA Today writes about a new Washington state law gives doctors the option of providing life-ending medicines to terminally ill patients. One doctor who said he probably wouldn't participate nonetheless added, "There's possibly a story out there,...

In the fight over whether to confirm Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services, traditional pro-lifers will focus on Sebelius's views on late term abortion and other legal restrictions. Interestingly, pro-life Democrats have continued with...