Public faith: A different approach

For people who equate conservative Christians with Americans -- and with the religious right -- Faithworks is a healthy antidote.

The UK-based organization began in 2001 as a campaign for the recognition of Christianity in local communities and an end to "discriminatory practices" in funding and partnerships.

From that start, the movement has broadened to helping local churches serve their communities. Faithworks has also developed a 6-point plan to reduce "fear of faith" in society -- especially the fear that it necessarily causes bigotry and divisiveness.

"We need to move beyond fearful, knee-jerk reactions to faith and develop an understanding of what it means to be motivated by faith and how active faith can actually benefit society," says Joy Madeiros, Faithworks public policy director.

The organization also posts the contents of its magazine and newsletter, in PDF form. A recent magazine issue deals with matters like rural and gang ministries. It also talks honestly about ethical dilemmas: family life versus public activism, and reducing personal debt versus fighting global poverty.

However you feel about separation of church and state, approaches like Faithworks are a cooling, calming way to address the issues. Maybe American Christians should take a few tips from their British brethren.

Some places are just ... different

You've been somewhere like that. The place feels different. It may put you in a trance, send you somewhere outside yourself. Or maybe just the opposite: It may make you feel more awake than ever before.

Sacred Destinations has catalogued those places, in astonishing variety -- 1,200 buildings, mountains, lakes, monuments, etc.

Here you'll see the familiar ancient Stonehenge in England (below), and the even older Carnac Stones in France. Learn of the 42,968-square-foot Grand Mosque of Mali, the world's largest mud structure. Discover the huge, mysterious mountainside animal carvings at Samaipata, Bolivia. Dip into the holy waters of Crater Lake and the Ganges River, and sacred mountains such as Mt. Sinai or Mt. Shasta.

Look through 59 countries, on pages featuring those beautiful Google maps marked with the sites. You can also search by category, such as Roman or Hindu sites, sacred mountains, Mayan ruins, even paths for fans of C. S. Lewis or The Da Vinci Code.

Don't know where to look? Just tap your F5 key a few times. Each time the homepage reloads, it shows a different picture -- from St. Basil's Cathedral in Russia, to Chichen Itza in Mexico, to the Pashupatinath Temple in Nepal.

Even better: You can download a collection of the photos in a Google gadget, for your Web site for desktop. If you dont have a gadget, Sacred Destinations has a link to help you get one.

Not so stingy, guys

As a superdirectory, the National Council of Churches has a lot going for it -- but it could have more if it gave away more.

The homepage has a good selection of religion news, analysis and other helpful information. A recent edition included an article on a mainline Protestant leader's selection to preach at the National Prayer Service after Barack Obama's inauguration as president.

Other links tell of the NCC's work in opposing human trafficking, as well as fighting the widespread abuse of women in the Congo. Other reports look at dangers of Christian Zionism and Islamic extremism. Still another has NCC's Rev. Michael Kinnamon joining Jewish and Muslim leaders in praying for peace

Many of those concerns get an ongoing look in EcuLink, a crisp, good-looking quarterly newsletter with more than 150,000 readers. Leave your mailing address and get it free.

Also click the link for Worldwide Faith News, a clearinghouse for denominational press releases and other documents. You can get them all e-mailed to you daily, but it's probably best to read them online -- unless you don't mind several per day.

So what's the problem with the site? Well, one is the link for the New Revised Standard Version , the NCC's elegant, accurate translation of the Bible. When you open it, do you get the Bible? Nope, just some sales talk and a price list. Other translators actually post Bible texts online -- such as the International Bible Society, with its New International Version.

Slightly better is the council's Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. It offers sample pages from the upcoming 2008 edition, plus the latest stats for the member denominations. It also has a directory of denominational Web sites, plus general sites like Ecunet and Adherents.com. For more, you'll have to buy the book.

All told, the NCC's resources offer many uses: sermon fodder, small-group topics, candidates for special appeals, subjects for personal prayers. But it could have been as generous as other such sites.

DVD Review: 'City of Ember'

The underrated City of Ember deserved more attention during its brief theatrical run last year. Catch it on DVD and marvel how closely it tracks the apocalyptic beliefs of several religions.

The city is a Dickensian slum deep underground, an immense bunker lit by bulbs on the cavern ceiling and powered by a huge generator. It's a result of desperate planning two centuries ago by its founders, who saw the world about to end. (The movie wisely doesn't say how. It's not the point anyway.)

Emberites live a meager life, carrying on amid food shortages and increasing terrifying blackouts. But the corrupt mayor (Bill Murray) does nothing about the crises, except fend for himself.

He also enforces a law against anyone trying to escape the city, warning of doom and darkness on the surface. But two teens, Doon (Harry Treadaway) and Lina (Saoirse Ronan), don't wait placidly for the end: They determine to fix the generator, or find a way out.

As luck or fate would have it, their answer comes with a click under Lina's bed. The metal box she inherited from an ancestor -- a former mayor -- has suddenly opened, to display a cryptic message. They eventually realize it's a set of instructions from the founders for leaving Ember.

The current mayor naturally tries to stop them from escaping, first with lies, then with force. The kids then strike out on their own and endure a harrowing voyage, not knowing what they'll find.

It's a remarkable set of elements for a children's movie. Self-determination. Staying true to oneself. Following ancient wisdom. And the kids' final ascent to the surface is about as spiritual as it gets: climbing a long flight of stairs, candle in hand, as reverently as any pilgrim approaching a holy site.

Doon and Lina are, in fact, walking well-traveled steps of several religions. Christianity, Judaism and Islam teach that God will step in one day and set everything right -- through the Messiah, or Mahdi, or the Hidden Imam. Buddhists and Hindus have their own versions, called Maitreya or Vishnu, although they must come repeatedly whenever things get too bad.

And the faiths have all left instructions in various records, often as overlooked in modern life as a box under a bed. Some Christians even like to say BIBLE stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth."

Have we outgrown such superstitions, as some might call them? Look at the peace and environmental and New Age movements. Read the warnings of food justice movements like Hazon, which runs the Jew & the Carrot blog. They all call for radical change in our lives, or else.

But can we save ourselves? Especially when we, or our ancestors, are the ones who got in peril? Maybe we need outside help. Maybe we need a vision of another world. This film may not provide answers, as scriptures can, but it could start the quest. Or light an Ember.

Howlelujah?

Right from the homepage, the Virtual Church of the Blind Chihuahua is ambivalent toward religion.

On the one hand, it claims to be "dedicated to enlarging religion as a source of inspiration and diminishing religion as a source of conflict in the world." But the homepage also has the slogan: "More to religion than pleasing your imaginary friend."

The creator, a 53-year-old weapons scientist(!) self-named Scooper, says he's a Lutheran and former atheist. He says the site is merely trying to make us all admit that, as the Bible says, "now we see through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13:12). Or, in his own style, we bark at everything like a little, sight-impaired dog.

So, what can we bark at? Well, the "church" lets people post essays. There's a story on a man who joined radical Islam in Britain, then left. There's an excruciating testimony from a woman who says she was seduced by a priest.

A gallery has some beautiful pictures of people, animals, flowers and scenery, many of them by Scooper himself. There's also a list of religious jokes, some genial, some lame, some snarky. Heavier theological stuff is available in the so-called Scriptorium section.

The site has discussions on several faiths, and those can be lucid and insightful. The one for Buddhism, for instance, says the faith's literature "is both immense and non-essential" -- non-essential, because the core of the faith is personal, unmediated enlightenment. Curiously, the article mentions Zen, but doesn't acknowledge that Zen is a blend of Buddhism and Taoism.

The facts on evolution

Before you have one more quarrel with a creationist -- or an evolutionist, if you're on that side -- click The Debate Over Evolution. This extensive story gallery, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, may not settle all arguments. But it will equip you for more intelligent ones.

The seven articles give an overview, then a rundown on social and legal dimensions of the debate. There's a piece on Charles Darwin and his theory. There's a timeline on developments and counter-developments -- such as the creation of the Institute for Creation Research in 1970, and the National Center for Science Education 11 years later.

A graph shows the percentage of people in 11 religious groups who believe evolution is the best explanation for the origins of life. Another article summarizes the religious standpoints -- and, in a true reader service, provides links to the denominational Web sites for you to see for yourself.

If you're in America, you can see how the controversy shakes out in your home state. Finally, you can read some fascinating findings and opinions on evolution and related topics. You'll find the famous (notorious?) cases like the Scopes Trial and the battle over Intelligent Design in Dover, Pa.

Also click the refreshing Q&A interview with Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project. An evangelical Christian as well as a first-class scientist, Collins argues both for faith and evolution. His is a rare voice for theistic evolution, and for respectful discussion.

Book review: 'The Shack'

What if God was one of us? Or, perhaps, three of us? And was/were available for questions?

What a list most of us would have -- from prejudice to disasters to cancer to paper cuts to brussels sprouts. But McKinley Philips has other questions. Like what happened to his young daughter after her kidnapping. And why he suffered as a boy under his brutal father's alcoholic rages.

He gets some answers -- but more often general reassurance of God's help and companionship -- in The Shack, a fanciful novel that has somehow caught so much reader attention, it's spent the better part of a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

The book has all the marks of a good novel: pacing, setting, atmosphere, natural-sounding dialogue. Well, most of the time on that last item. More on that later.

Mack's daughter Missy goes missing on a camping trip in the Oregon mountains, and no number of volunteers or state troopers can find her. Early suspicion falls on a known child killer, sending Mack into a chronic depression.

His grief is cut short by an unsigned note in his mailbox -- which he suspects is from the deity -- summoning him to the abandoned shack that held the last evidence of the girl. Surprise #2 -- and #3 and #4 -- waiting for him at the shack are God the Father as a large, motherly black woman and God the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman in a cloudlike robe. At least God the Son is a more traditional Middle Eastern man.

They take turns counseling Mack, alternately comforting him and confronting him with his attitudes and life decisions. How the sessions change Mack, and what they have to do with Missy, take up the rest of the 248-page book.

Much of it is standard conservative Christianity: God loves you and looks after you, even when you don't think he/she does. There's some gender bending, of course, but that kind of license should upset no one who has read C. S. Lewis' novels.

What hurts the book is the preaching, clumsily disguised as dialogue. It's a truism that the longest speeches in a book are the opinions of the author. And this book puts long speeches in the mouth of one or another of the Trinity.

Some of it is comforting, like how God brings good out of bad: "Mack, just because I work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies." Some of it, well, depends on your own outlook. Like when Jesus condemns organized religion -- along with politics and economics -- as part of "the man-made trinity of terrors that ravages the earth and deceives those I care about."

It goes on like this for nearly a hundred pages -- more absorbing than it may sound, but still a lot of indoctrination. For those who persevere, Young does paint a vivid picture of the spiritual world through God's eyes, as well as a vision of reconciliation and freedom from guilt.

Young says the book is actually an autobiography; the shack is an allegory for what went on in his own soul over a painful 11 years of prayer and introspection. And from the thousands of responses posted on his Web site, the book speaks to a lot of people.

So maybe he does have room to talk about spirit and emotion. Do you have to swallow it all? Of course not. But as Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Or if he has eyes to read ...

FILM REVIEW: Marley & Me

Have you noticed how many movies lately are pro-family? There's Knocked Up, where a couple's personal agendas melt in the face of their new baby. There's Meet the Browns, which shows the lengths a good mother will take in order to raise and protect her children.

Also note: Not all family films are good to bring kids to.

Put Marley & Me in that category. On the surface, the film is a comedy about a lovable though rambunctious dog. But it's really about how he tests their limits for love, and in so doing, expands those limits. It also explores some very adult life choices.

Child or career? It's a question young couples often ask, especially if each mate is ambitious and talented. And John and Jennifer Grogan (Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston) fit that bill. He's a news writer for the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. She's a feature writer for the Palm Beach Post. (Full disclosure: I work at the Sun Sentinel and used to talk to John occasionally, though I didn't know him well.)

Their solution at first is a large, adorable yellow Labrador puppy. Naming him Marley, for the late reggae singer Bob Marley, they treat him like their child.

That is, if your child chews couch cushions, terrorizes a sitter, howls at South Florida's many thunderstorms and chases just about anything, dragging along whoever is holding the leash. Marley is even expelled from obedience school.

Jennifer finally becomes pregnant -- three times -- and leaves her job for the mommy track. The kids plus "the world's worst dog," as John calls him, cause quarrels. John withdraws, Jennifer calms down and apologizes, they make up.

But long before then, it's clear that Marley has pried open the Grogans' hearts. After all, if they can bear with a big, half-insane dog, they can surely care for human children.

Family values even figure professionally. Jennifer leaves her job to care for the kids. She also supports his decision to move to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

There, he crosses paths with a friend from the Sun Sentinel -- someone he envied for his job as a foreign correspondent. To his surprise, the friend seems to envy John, for his beautiful wife and three kids. Thought-provoking stuff on life's tradeoffs.

The cautions? Some "goddamns" and lovemaking scenes, with a bit of partial nudity (hey, it does portray a married couple, and it does have Jennifer Aniston to show off). There's also a squick-inducing scene where John has to sift through Marley's poop for a necklace he ate.

Another question mark is when John and Jennifer want to make love in an Irish inn, but not with pictures of Jesus and Mary in the bedroom. Oh, yeah, there's also when Marley humps the instructor's leg at obedience school (Kathleen Turner, in surely her most humiliating role.)

So, yes, Marley & Me qualifies as a family film. It reaffirms traditional marriage and shows how commitment can overcome difficulties. Just leave the youngest members of the family home.

TV REVIEW: 'Jesus in India'

A major Christian holiday is just around the corner, and sure enough, here comes one of those revisionist "documentaries" attacking cherished beliefs. For Jesus in India, the focus is on historical gossip that has Jesus traveling east during his youth to learn from Buddhist and Hindu philosophers.

The program (9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time Dec. 22) on the Sundance Channel, looks at the "missing years" of Jesus, between his 12th and 30th years, when the Bible reports nothing about him. During those years, some say, he studied ethics and mysticism in the East before returning to the Holy Land. There’s even talk that he escaped crucifixion, returned to India, and died and was entombed there.

Author Edward T. Martin makes a brave, and apparently well-funded, effort to ferret out links between Jesus and India. With Paul Davids as director, he visits St. Thomas Mount in southern India, where Christians say their forebears hearken back to Bible times. He talks to the Shankaracharya, a pre-eminent Hindu leader. He consults a monk in a monastery, where a library is said to hold an ancient account of Jesus' sojourn. He ventures into tense, violent Srinagar, where some locals say Jesus is entombed.

But you won't be surprised to know that Martin finds nothing definite; otherwise, it would have been on CNN before the Sundance Channel. Nope. The Shankaracharya says he knows the story of Jesus in India, but the sourcebooks are long lost. And the monk says the head of the monastery is away, and he's the only one who can approve a search of the books.

Some of the onscreen comments even contradict Martin's premise. In Srinagar, a police officer and a Muslim leader vigorously deny Jesus' body is there, saying it's that of another prophet instead. Jesus in India notes this, then blithely moves on.

Quality control may be one of the problems here. Jesus in India quotes decent sources like a Vatican official, a rabbi from Loyola and two scholars from Georgetown. But it also recruits Elaine Pagels of Princeton, who detours onto her favorite topic, the Gnostic Gospels -- a collection of third century Egyptian scrolls that she and others are trying to paint as lost Bible books. Incredibly, another source is a book by Elizabeth Claire Prophet, former head of the New-Agey Church Universal and Triumphant.

Jesus in India spends a lot of time on Martin's background -- perhaps to help us understand his viewpoint, perhaps to pad the program. Scenes abound of sleepy Lampasas, Texas, and the stark Church of Christ where Martin grew up, in a familiar portrayal of conservative Christians as crude and ignorant. However, the onscreen interviews don’t make them sound like the oppressive bullies that Martin makes them out to be.

It shows the immense shadow cast by Jesus that so many people -- Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, New Agers, broadcasters, even Bible revisionists -- want to claim him. But they're mainly trying to recast him in their own image. That’s a danger for us all, of course, believers or not. But to get closer to Jesus and his teachings, it's best to start with something better than revisionism.

Something about Mary

For millions of people, Mary is more than a mere supporting player in Christmas pageants. Devotees, in fact, claim to have seen supernatural apparitions of Mary in Spain and Portugal, Japan and Korea, Egypt and Venezuela.

For the Festival of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Dec. 12, let's take a look at Web sites that promote these appearances.

Catholic Online gives a typically crisp rendition of the Guadalupeapparition in 1531, to a Mexican Indian named Juan Diego. The story is remarkable for yielding an image of Mary on a cactus-cloth poncho -- a picture still visible five centuries later. (See a picture of the original image at the right, from http://www.sancta.org.) It's also unusual for being among the few apparitions that have gained official church approval.

Yet the many Marian Web sites, like this one and this one, cheerfully lump in the approved with the others. You'll see not only accounts of the approved Our Lady of Lourdes and Fatima, but the unapproved Garabandal and Medjugorje.

You can even see videos of some apparitions, courtesy of Google Video. One link leads to GodWay, a Coptic Orthodox site.

GodWay has some of the lesser-known apparitions, including Naju, South Korea, and Zeitoun, Egypt. The Zeitoun section has a collection of fuzzy-looking photos purporting to show a woman robed in light, walking the rooftops of Egyptian churches.

Taken together, the reported sightings reveal some unexpected things. One is a quiet, gentle rebellion against the Catholic hierarchy. Even if the Church doesn’t approve an apparition, people flock to them anyway.

Another observation: For many Catholics, even Jesus isn't enough. They seem to feel a need to see, not just believe.

Finally, some church thinkers are surprisingly indulgent about the apparitions. I once asked Eugene Kennedy, a Catholic psychologist, why people saw Mary so much. His answer: "Why are you surprised? The mother is one of the most powerful images we know."

I was amazed. He artfully left undropped the other shoe: that people may be inspired by the apparitions, whether they're real or not.

Fangs, but no fangs

Vampires get organized, though satirical, opposition from Fellowship of the Sun. This self-proclaimed watchdog group gets a ton of mileage from conspiracy-theory thinking. Not to mention movies like Twilight and TV shows like HBO's True Blood.

Like how? Place tongue firmly in cheek -- or, perhaps, fangs in throat -- and read on:

• Opposing the fictional "Vampire Rights Amendment."

• Warning that humans can be "perverted" into becoming vampires.

• Contrasting pictures of simpering, smiling humans with scowling, fanged vamps.

• Using blog-style shorthand like CoD (Creatures of the Darkness).

• Listing handy anti-vampire measures: garlic, crucifixes, lights around your porch.

• Planting family-style fearmongering: "What will you say when YOUR daughter brings a vampire home?"

The group also mocks merchandising, with silver pendants with the triangular FoS logo, and bumper stickers with lame slogans: "Vampires? No Fangs"; "Mortal On Board"; "Vampires Suck."

So, who is this site aimed at? Well, you think of groups against all kinds of folks: gays, Wiccans, Muslims, racial and ethnic groups. Except for the obit on the fellowship's founder: "Reverend Theodore Newlin, tireless crusader for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." So much for subtlety.

There is, however, a more nuanced look at vampirism and its religious-psychological facets. See Nicky Loomis' analysis on this Web site at the University of Southern California. It's thoughtful and measured. Something to sink your teeth into.

Heaven on earth?

"God is not the voice in the whirlwind; god is the whirlwind," says Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, on the homepage of World Pantheism. Devoted to the search for the divine in everything, the Pantheists don't look for God in the universe -- they see God as the universe.

Their stated beliefs sound nice, at first: the awe of staring at the stars, or the peace in walking through a forest. The group reveres and cares for nature, embracing science, and respects reason and evidence.

The Pantheists post lots of material in support of their beliefs. A History of Pantheism declares common cause with Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Confucians, native Americans, even Pagans and Wiccans -- as long as they see gods and goddess only as metaphors. The site even mentions Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, though it properly calls him a Panentheist -- one who sees the universe as part of God, but not the whole.

It's when the Pantheists say what they're not, that another face shows. They shun "grovelling worship or the expectation that there is some being out there who can answer our prayers." They want to be "free from guilt about original sin." They value "reason rather than fanaticism," and "individual choice rather than pushing prejudice down people's throats."

You know, not like those ignorant, groveling, pushy other spiritual groups.

You can download some interesting back copies of the organization's Pan magazine, like an issue on ethics. And the Pantheists offer several lists to help find one another.

A cool device is the Flash map on Frappr.com. Dots on the map show men, women and local Pantheist groups.

Young faith

Simply Youth Ministry has a lot for sale, but it also gives away an incredible amount, gleaned from sources like Saddleback Church and Youth Specialties. You'll find videos, games, booklets, tips for mission trips, and good-looking guides for small groups and discipleship lessons.

Topics are earnest and relevant. A sound file discusses "God's Extreme Makeover." Young talking heads reassure us that "Everybody Hurts." A lesson encourages high school girls to resist society's obsession with appearance.

Click the "Forms" icon to find nuts and bolts of youth ministry: event planners and recaps, a thank-you card, a scholarship application, a first-time visitor survey, a student leadership agenda.

Most of the freebies are in .zip files, so you'll need WinZip or an equivalent to open them. Once unzipped, some are in Word format, some in .pdf, some in PowerPoint, some in RealPlayer, so you'll need those applications, too.

Finally, SYM has 36 free videos, on various inspirational or instructional topics. But watch out: The files are huge, some over 100 megabytes. If you’re on a church or other shared computer, try to pick a time when others aren't using the connection.

Rumi-nations

What a relief Jalaluddin Rumi is. A holy man who enjoys family and friends. And who sounds like he's had some experience with the opposite sex.

Take this poem, one of the 70,000+ he wrote:

Come to the orchard in spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Start with Rumi.net, a very good assortment of poems, essays and biographies. The work of Jewish-Persian poet Shahram Shiva, the site tells of Rumi's wealthy upbringing in the eastern Persian empire -- and the tragedy that may have birthed much of his poetry.

Some of the poems seem to have a double meaning:

By day I praised you
and never knew it.
By night I stayed with you
and never knew it.
I always thought that
I was me -- but no,
I was you
and never knew it.

Don't leave this site without seeing some of the poems in Flash 10. First you see the poem in Persian calligraphy. Wave your mouse pointer over it, and it morphs into a transliteration. Another wave, and it becomes a word-for-word translation. Wave #4 makes it fluent English.

You can find more Rumi poems here and here. Also check out Rumi's masterpiece, The Masnavi. The six-book compendium holds his teachings about Sufism, the mystical Islamic sect he belonged to.

Another viewpoint on Rumi's life is in the San Francisco Chronicle. The 2007 article suggests that studying Rumi's forgiving nature could help ease tensions between modern Muslims and westerners.