Century marks

Christian Century, Sept 6, 2003

GETTING IT TOGETHER: In the much cited book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argued that civic and social involvement in American had declined precipitously over the last third of the 20th century. But in a sequel he tells 12 stories of communities and organizations that are bucking this trend (Better Together, with Lewis M. Feldstein; Simon & Schuster). Their work creates "social capital" that benefits even those not directly engaged in the efforts. Two southern California congregations are cited as examples: Saddleback Church, a 45,000-member evangelical church that turns "seekers" into committed Christians and organizes people into small groups, and All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, which also emphasizes community through small groups, but instead of combining innovative worship styles and religious certainty (as at Saddleback) All Saints joins traditional Episcopal ritual with social liberalism and tolerance for theological ambiguity. Some learnings from these stories: building social capital takes time and effort. It is better done on the local level where people can have face-to-face encounters. Technology, such as the Internet, doesn't play a big role in their stories. "For creating bonds of trust and reciprocity smaller is often better, but for extending the power and reach of social networks bigger is often better."

THE GREAT DIVIDE: Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof believes that faith is the great divide between the United States and the rest of the industrialized world. For instance, in America 58 percent of people say that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral, whereas in France only 13 percent hold this view. Kristof sees belief in the virgin birth of Jesus as a sign of religious trends in America, noting that 83 percent of Americans believe in the virgin birth, while only 28 percent believe in evolution. Not only do 91 percent of Christians believe in the virgin birth, but 47 percent of non-Christians claim to believe in it. Kristof recalls, by contrast, the views of his grandfather, an active and devout Presbyterian layperson who was typical of his times: he believed in evolution, but considered the virgin birth a pious legend. Kristof thinks that there is a great divide in American too--a divide between the religions and the intellectual. "I do think that we're in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society (New York Times, August 15).

DOUBLE STANDARD: The United States is holding more than 600 prisoners in small cages at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. Alleged terrorists, most of them have been there for 18 months without charges, trials or access to lawyers. They've not even been given prisoner-of-war status. Recently, President Bush declared that six of them are eligible for trial by a military commission hand-picked by Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense. The accused will be defended by U.S. military lawyers. Although they may request civilian lawyers, those lawyers will have to receive security clearances by the government and won't be assured private communications with their clients. Those on trial could be convicted or sentenced to death on the basis of evidence that would not be admitted to a court of law. And if convicted, the accused will have no right to appeal to a court of law but only to a second panel of military officers. If another country treated American citizens this way, we'd be justifiably outraged, says Doug Cassel, director of the Center for International Human Rights of the Northwestern University School of Law. Guantanamo is "a betrayal of what American stands for," says Stuart Taylor Jr. (Chicago Tribune, August 17).

VISIBLE WORLD: Many people of faith would say that the spiritual realm is the real world, in contrast to the view of materialists, for whom the only world is that which can be verified empirically. But literary and biblical scholar Northrop Frye (1912-1991) maintained that the Bible doesn't think of the invisible world as the superior one; rather, it is through the invisible world that the visible world is manifest. Take air, for instance: you can't see it; in fact, if you could see it, you wouldn't be able to see anything else; you would be in a vapor or a mist. But the air, being invisible, makes it possible to see what can be seen. Frye notes that in the first account of creation in Genesis, the light and the firmament--the very basis of sight and sound--were created first. "There is a sense in which you don't see light either: yon see a source or reflection of light" (Northrop Frye's Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts University of Toronto Press)

JESUS WASN'T A SOCIALIST: Last year at this time the University of North Carolina found itself on the defensive about a book on the Qur'an it required incoming students to read. A similar controversy emerged this year when Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed was made the selection for new students. Ehrenreich reports on a number of minimum wage jobs she took, demonstrating that such workers cannot get by in the American economy. But some conservative UNC students and state legislators denounced the book as at "classic Marxist rant" and charged Ehrenreich with being a Marxist, a socialist, and an atheist guilty of "an anti-Christian bigotry." This last descriptor, she assumes, came from her book's characterization of Jesus as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist." The "guzzling" bit was overstated, she admits, but she now thinks Jesus was a little too far left to be a socialist, on the basis of his instruction to the "rich young ruler" to sell all he had and give to the poor. If that's what it takes to be a true Christian, Ehrenreich says, it's much easier to be a socialist. To be a socialist, "you have to dedicate yourself to working for the poor, just as a Christian should, but at least you get to keep your stuff" (Progressive, September).