Faith

From an op-ed piece in USA Today by Jonah Goldberg:

There's no substitute for a good pope. What other religious leader can start a global argument about theology? The Dalai Lama? Perhaps. The archbishop of Canterbury? Doubtful. Pat Robertson? Please. Notice how the pope doesn't have a Muslim counterpart to "dialogue" with. It's the pope vs. 10,000 imams, scholars and other self-anointed spokesmen for Islam. It's a bit like Gulliver vs. the Lilliputians. So, where is the Muslim pope? This question isn't often asked in the West. Particularly among left-leaning scholars of Islam, the search has been on for a "Muslim Martin Luther."... This quest for a Muslim Luther centered on the understandable hope that such a person could reform Islam toward liberalization and modernization, just as Luther supposedly did in Europe. The problem is he did no such thing. His gripe with Roman Catholicism wasn't that it was too reactionary and rigid, but just the opposite. He thought the church had become too worldly and licentious, selling "indulgences" - or divine do-overs - to the highest bidder and the like. The early Protestants were hardly "moderates" and, normally, secular liberals are keen to make this point. When was the last time you heard a Western liberal pine for a return of Puritanism? Luther and his immediate successors were true believers. And, while enormous theological and historical differences shouldn't be overlooked, today's Islamic fundamentalists have quite a bit in common with these religious crusaders... Today, Islam is chockablock with Muslim Luthers claiming to have a monopoly on the Quran's true meaning. Murderers can shop around for a fatwa endorsing the most horrific - and technically un-Islamic - barbarism like junkies searching for a corrupt doctor with a prescription pad for hire. No, what the Muslim world needs is a pope. Large, old institutions such as the Catholic Church have the "worldliness" to value flexibility and tolerance, and the moral and theological authority to clamp down on those who see compromise as heresy. Pope Clement XIV's famous, or infamous, suppression of Jesuits in 1773 might be an example of both qualities. The Ottoman Empire played a similar, if imperfect, role before its demise. In its absence, Islamic Lilliputians run amok. Ironically, Muslims don't want this divisiveness. The jihadists strive to restore the caliphate as an Islamist thousand-year Reich. But even the moderates long for unity among the Islamic nations. They might one day forge the sort of compromise we in the West reached, but the road map there isn't well illuminated by our past.

From an article of the same title by K. Connie Kang in the LA Times:

Prayer is in. Surveys show that church attendance may be down, but praying is up. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans pray - 82% of adults. Nearly 90% believe in God. Books on prayer regularly make bestseller lists. And many people are choosing to pray together, whether literally in the same room, such as the worshipers at Oriental Mission Church, or at home through organized prayer efforts. "We're a people of faith," says Tim Kelly, theologian and psychologist on the faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. "Unlike the other Western nations that have turned away from their religious roots as they became more advanced, America has remained well-grounded in faith."... The advent of the Internet has made group praying more visible and organized, enabling millions to pray about the same issues daily. The nation's largest prayer group is believed to be the Internet-based Presidential Prayer Team, which claims 3 million participants nationwide. Participants agree to pray daily for the nation, President Bush, his Cabinet, other national leaders, U.S. troops and their families. The nondenominational spiritual movement, based in Phoenix, also got its start after Sept. 11... Some prayer groups specialize in Hollywood. One is the Hollywood Prayer Network, which pairs up people outside the entertainment industry with Christians inside Hollywood as one-to-one "prayer partners." The goal: that every Christian in Hollywood will be prayed for by an intercessor somewhere around the world. The group now has more than 400 one-to-one prayer partnerships in the U.S. and three other countries. Its homepage (hollywoodprayernetwork.org) shows the famous Hollywood sign over the Los Angeles skyline. Another organization, Redlands-headquartered Mastermedia International Inc., asks participants to pray for celebrities and members of the entertainment industry who don't know they are being prayed for.

From an article of the same title by Frances Grandy Taylor (of the Hartford Courant) and reprinted in the LA Times:

There was a time when you had to attend a church to listen to the weekly sermon or become a regular member to hear a choir whose music you really love. These days, thanks to iPod, you don't have to actually be there. A website called GodCast 1000 (godcast1000.com) has been launched to help users "put God on your iPod." It bills itself as the largest free directory of Christian music, sermons, video and Bible study on the Internet. It lists more than 500 digital audio files that can be downloaded from the website to a computer or iPod... The Rev. Shaun Olsen of the Family Worship Center in McKinney, Texas, an Assemblies of God church in suburban Dallas, says he turned to "godcasting" for the first time last year to reach members of his congregation who travel. The church's podcast includes the entire Sunday service. "We also have hundreds of missionaries attached to this church who are serving around the world in India, Pakistan and South Africa, and that enables them to listen to the service back home. We've gotten a great response, especially from the business community." Churches are also using podcasts to reach regular worshippers in new ways, says Raney, who adds that churches that aren't technologically savvy can get help through the website's Sermoncast program, where sermon tapes and CDs can be converted for a fee to a format that can be downloaded.

David Van Beima and Jeff Chu spurred significant discussion of that question with their article of the same title in Time. There's a summary on cnn.com here. From that summary:

In three of the Gospels, Jesus warns that each of his disciples may have to "deny himself" and even "take up his Cross." In support of this prediction, he contrasts the fleeting pleasures of today with the promise of eternity: "For what profit is it to a man," he asks, "if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" Generations of churchgoers have understood that being Christian means being ready to sacrifice. But for a growing number of Christians, the question is better restated, "Why not gain the whole world plus my soul?" For several decades, a philosophy has been percolating in the 10 million-strong Pentecostal wing of Christianity that seems to turn the Gospels' passage on its head. Certainly, it allows, Christians should keep one eye on heaven. But the new good news is that God doesn't want us to wait. Known (or vilified) under a variety of names -- Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, Prosperity Theology -- its emphasis is on God's promised generosity in this life. In a nutshell, it suggests that a God who loves you does not want you to be broke. Its signature verse could be John 10:10: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." In a Time poll, 17 percent of Christians surveyed said they considered themselves part of such a movement, while a full 61 percent believed that God wants people to be prosperous. "Prosperity" first blazed to public attention as the driveshaft in the moneymaking machine that was 1980s televangelism and faded from mainstream view with the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart scandals. But now, after some key modifications (which have inspired some to redub it Prosperity Lite), it has not only recovered but is booming. Of the four biggest megachurches in the country, three -- Joel Osteen's Lakewood in Houston; T.D. Jakes' Potter's House in south Dallas; and Creflo Dollar's World Changers in Atlanta -- are Prosperity or Prosperity Lite pulpits (although Jakes' ministry has many more facets). While they don't exclusively teach that God's riches want to be in believers' wallets, it is a key part of their doctrine. And propelled by Osteen's 4 million-selling book, Your Best Life Now, the belief has swept beyond its Pentecostal base into more buttoned-down evangelical churches, and even into congregations in the more liberal Mainline. It is taught in hundreds of non-Pentecostal Bible studies. One Pennsylvania Lutheran pastor even made it the basis for a sermon series for Lent, when Christians usually meditate on why Jesus was having His Worst Life Then. The movement's renaissance has infuriated a number of prominent pastors, theologians and commentators. Fellow megapastor Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Life has outsold Osteen's by a ratio of 7 to 1, finds the very basis of Prosperity laughable. "This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy?" he snorts. "There is a word for that: baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn't everyone in the church a millionaire?"

Andrew Sullivan said:

There are few messages more obvious in the Gospels than a disregard for the biological family and a rejection of earthly wealth. Jesus says nothing about abortion or homosexuality, but he is quite clear about abandoning your spouse, parents and children and divesting yourself of all worldly goods. These are terribly difficult doctrines; and few of us who call ourselves Christians are able to live by them. But most Christians have at least not deceived themselves into thinking that the Gospels are actually about family life above everything and wealth as a critical element of Christian life. Until now. The Prosperity Gospel is one of the greatest blasphemies against the message of Jesus - but it is increasingly a part of the American "Christian" landscape.

From Mike Cope:

The basic movement of the gospel is clear (Phil. 2:5ff): self-denial and self-sacrifice rather than self-fulfillment. We follow one who had no place to lay his head, who warned us that life does not consist in the abundance of things, who told a wealthy man to sell all and give to the poor, who insisted that we cannot have two masters (God and $$). Followers of Christ in other cultures have often lost all as a result of their faithfulness to him.

David from Light and Salt contrasted Osteen's message with a powerful quote from "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claiborne:

So I did a little survey, probing Christians about their (mis) conceptions of Jesus. It was fun just to see how many people think Jesus loved homosexuals or ate kosher. But I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what He did. We can applaud what He preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore His cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not KNOW the poor. When the worlds of poverty and wealth collide, the resulting powerful fusion can change the world. But that collision rarely happens. I could feel it happening inside of me. One of my punk-rock friends asked me why so many rich people like talking to me, and I said because I'm nice to them. He asked me why I was nice to them. I said because I can see myself in them. That gives me a little patience and grace. I long for the Calcutta slums to meet the Chicago suburbs, for lepers to meet landowners and for each to see God's image in the other. It's no wonder that the footsteps of Jesus lead from the tax collectors to the lepers. I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

From an article of the same title by Rafe Needleman on cnet's news.com:

A new service, MyChurch.org, is a narrow social network. The site was created so churches could add social networking to their own online and social programs, giving both a church's congregants and the "un-churched" a place where they can meet each other (and church officials) and do standard social network stuff: Make friends, get dates, chat about things, and show off their photos. MyChurch is more of a sales strategy than a clever new technology. Unlike the beautiful and highly interactive Faces.com social network I covered yesterday, MyChurch feels like a very spare version of MySpace. From a social perspective, it's more like Facebook -- it lets you go deep into a particular community, rather than broadcasting your personality to the entire world. MyChurch is probably a great business (churches can pay extra for additional bandwidth, storage, and services), but it's hardly a technical breakout. Although there is one very clever feature: Users can invite all their MySpace contacts with one click, co-founder Joe Suh told me.