Religiosity is Complex, Church Decline Less So

Not really intending to, I seem to have gotten myself into another brief series of postings on the ever-pressing question of church decline.  There are three elements or aspects of this issue that need to be separated from each other: (1) organized religion; (2) religiosity more generally; and (3) spirituality.  While the distinction between religiosity and spirituality is a fuzzy one at best, there is a difference.  Spirituality has to do with an inner sense of non-material, meta-physical realities that somehow impinge on one's life.  A person can be spiritual without being religious.  Religion involves practicing certain activities, such as prayer or meditation, that seek to express spirituality overtly.  Religion usually involves others.  When this practice of religion becomes pro forma or selfishly self-serving, one can be religious without being spiritual.

This is complex stuff as can be seen by an Al Jazerra English posting by Ali Reza Eshraghi entitled, "Iranians under the Islamic regime: more or less religious?"  He argues that the current state of Islamic practice in Iran is complex and that both the nation's authorities and critics are not willing to acknowledge its true state, esp. among young people.  What evidence there is suggests that in the face of governmental pressure to practice Islam and resistance to that pressure by its critics, the nation has remained as religious as it was at the time of the Iranian Revolution, but young people in particular practice their religion in unconventional ways.  They mix lipstick with prayer and sexual petting with devotion.  Quoting an Iranian sociologist, Eshraghi claims that Iranians are becoming more secular, more modern but not losing their religiosity.  He concludes that the, "Iranian people are going their own way and are playing in a ring of so-called contradictions; they remember some things and forget others; they tightly cling to dogmas and easily let go of others. Instead of overemphasizing the internal homogeneity of religion, they have turned to communal conformity. And this has resulted in a new form of religiosity which one could even call functionalist."

So, let me come back to the thought that for all of the study that has gone into church decline in America things are still murky at best.  Decline is real.  But the implications of current trends for the future are unclear.  We are not Iran, but we are also not Europe.  In various places and ways, committed Christian folk are working on new, more functional forms of American church life.  Time will tell what it all means.

Summer Reading (ii)

Before his biography of Jesus stirred the waters a bit, Reza Aslan's introduction to Islam, No god but God (updated ed., Random House, 2011) has been his best know work.  Itself somewhat controversial among a smaller audience, the book seeks to introduce Aslan's readers to an Islam that is diverse, vibrant, and beautiful.  Written in the shadow of 9/11, he also wants his Western audience to understand that the Islam of the Prophet was far more tolerant and accepting of others than its fundamentalist versions of today.  The problems of Islam began with Muhammad's successors.  Aslan captures both the spirituality and the politics of Islam as seen from a moderate (read "progressive") perspective, and he is honest about the issues facing Muslims and the darker side of their religion while remaining positive and upbeat about Islam itself.  The book is well-written, well-researched, and it moves along at a good pace.  If you are interested in world faiths in general and/or Islam in particular, this is a book well worth reading.  It provides something of an antidote to the mindless anti-Islamic, anti-Arab prejudices of many in the West today.

As a footnote, one thing I found interesting is that the State of Israel is hardly mentioned at all and nothing is said about its part in radicalizing  certain segments of the Muslim Arab peoples.  One wonders why.

Interfaith Choices

Mother Mosque of America, Cedar Rapids, IA

If current trends continue, American Christians will increasingly be facing crucial choices concerning their neighbors of other faiths and no faith  Those choices are to embrace them, passively accept them, ignore them, passively reject them, or actively reject them.  While American churches are trending rightward and downward, growing numbers of Americans (especially younger Americans) are choosing "no faith" as their religious preference.  And the numbers of people of other faiths is growing, apparently rapidly in some cases.

For example, last year a group of research organizations issued a report entitled, "The American Mosque 2011," which indicates that American Islam is growing rapidly, is largely moderate theologically, and has become much more broadly accepted by the general public.  The number of mosques in the United States increased by some 74% between 2000 and 2011 while the number of worshippers also increased from roughly 2 million to 2.6 million, and increase of 30%.  The report estimates that there could now be as many as about 7 million American Muslims.  This survey also found that some 56% of mosque leaders practice a moderate faith that combines traditional approaches to Islam with a desire to adapt their faith to contemporary circumstances.  Only 11% hold to a very conservative and literalist faith.  Finally, where in 2000 some 54% of mosque leaders felt that American society was hostile to Islam in 2011 that number had dropped to 25%.  The report also shows that mosque leaders are overwhelmingly committed to active participation in American society and involvement in the political process.

Christianity is the faith of choice of the great majority of Americans and will remain so for decades to come, but it will be less and less so as those decades pass.  One way or another, we will have to decide how we want to relate to our neighbors of other faiths.  As usual "not deciding" is itself a decision.  Will they be our friends or our enemies?  Will we see in them our neighbor in the way that Christ saw the Samaritans as neighbor?  Decisions, decisions.

Meeting at the Boundaries of Islam & Science

Illustration by an 11th century Islamic scientist
 of phases of the moon (from Wikipedia)

If a March 2011 interview with Nidhal Guessoum (here) is any indication, the relationship between science and religion is even more an issue in West Asia (a.k.a the Middle East) than it is here in the U.S.  Guessoum is a professor of physics at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and has recently authored a book on the subject of Islam and science, which is entitled Islam's Quantum Question.

In his interview, Prof. Guessoum recalls that Islam has a rich scientific heritage going back a thousand years, which has been largely lost in more recent centuries.  Today, science in the Arab nations is dominated by religious concerns and a need to bend science to fit into the mold of religion.  He believes that science has declined in the Arab world for three related reasons: dictatorships, corruption, and nepotism & cronyism.  Science requires a free environment to thrive, and it has not had that in West Asia and North Africa.  The Arab nations, furthermore, see the decline of religion in the West and link that decline in their minds to the influence of science.  Even today there are relatively few non-religious academics and those few must maintain a low profile.

Still, Guessoum sees grounds for a dialogue between Islam and the West concerning science, one that would be beneficial to the Arab world because it would foster a more realistic attitude about science and how it is approached.  It would teach the Arab world that it cannot simply pick and choose what it wants to believe and not believe regarding scientific findings.  It would also inspire greater thought concerning the "proper relationship between faith and reason," an issue of importance in the Muslim world.  He believes that the West would benefit as well, esp. since Arab academia has never tried to keep religion "under wraps."  If I understand this correctly, Guessoum believes that the Arab world would benefit from an encounter with an independent science that pursues its studies irrespective of religious agendas and the West would benefit from an encounter with a culture that is not as hung up on the relationship of science and religion as we are in Europe and North America.

Guessoum's proposed dialogue between Islam and science offers an intriguing insight into just how important the strategy of dialogue (listening to learn, speaking to share) can be in our conflicted modern world.  It also points in a direction that we would do well to consider, namely that religion and science are neither enemies or allies but just two human endeavors that can benefit from each other's views and wisdom in several different ways.

Ban the Burqa - Or Not

The Islamic full-body dress for women including the face, the burqa, has sparked one of Europe's hottest social debates.  Belgium and France have banned them and the British are now engaged in their own debate over taking similar legal steps against the burqa.  What makes the debate so intense and difficult is that there are reasonable arguments both for and against permitting burqas to be worn in public.  Women's rights activists in particular find themselves on both sides, often ambivalently so.  On the one hand, what right does the state have to dictate women's dress as long as nudity is not involved?  On the other hand, the burqa is clearly imposed on women and whatever individual women say they feel about it the burqa violates women's rights to full equality with men.  There are also cultural issues involved.  Again, on the one hand, Muslims in Europe are a minority group that  should have its rights protected, including the right to distinctive dress.  On the other hand, minority groups must conform to the generally accepted values of the larger society, especially immigrant minorities, and the burqa is widely unacceptable dress in Europe according to those norms.  Those who oppose the burqas often cite security concerns and that it is a wedge for militant Islam.  Those who oppose banning the burqas say the security issues are minimal to non-existent.

Perfectly reasonable people find themselves on both sides of the divide.  Feminist Mona Eltahawy has written an emotional op-ed piece for the New York Times arguing against the burqa as a Muslim woman.  Liberated young woman, Nesrine Malik, argues with equal vigor (here) for the burqa as a Muslim woman.

The burqa has not become a national issue in the U.S.—yet—but we have our own hot button issues that are debatable because there are reasonable arguments on both sides.  Abortion is such an issue, pitting the rights of the unborn against the rights of women.  The legal establishment of English, pitting the linguistic rights of minorities against the need for a common public language is another such issue.  People become passionate advocates on these issues just because there is a gray area.  And we have to make decisions.  Either abortion is legal or it isn't.  Either we establish one language is the language of legal public discourse or we don't.  Either we ban the burqa or we don't.  Yes, there is wiggle room for some compromise, but at the end of the day we either do or don't.

Two quick thoughts: first, it would seem spiritually reasonable that it is at precisely these points of intense disagreement that people of faith would demonstrate compassion and understanding towards those who differ on hard issues, including other people of faith.  Second, in the real world it doesn't work that way.  Some of the worst, most acrimonious fights over hard issues are fought between true believers on both sides of issues such as the role of women in the church, the way we read the Bible, evolution, and homosexuality.  People of faith should be better than average at dealing with controversial issues, but it turns out that all too often we are no better or even worse at doing so—with serious consequences for society and for the faith.

A Modest Decision

Kulsoom Abdullah, U.S. weightlifter

Kulsoom Abdullah, an American weightlifter from Atlanta was not going to be able to compete in the U.S. Championship this month because, as a Muslim woman, she could not conform to the regulations for dress required by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF).  Both the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. Weightlifting Federation appealed to the IWF for a change in the regulations so that Abdullah could wear a form fitting "unitard" under the regulation dress.  The change would allow her to conform to her faith's expectations for modesty in dress while still allowing judges to judge her performance (source).  On June 29th, the IWF announced changes in its dress code that will allow Muslim women to compete at all levels of international weightlifting.  In the news release announcing its official decision on its website, the IWF stated,

"Weightlifting is an Olympic Sport open for all athletes to participate without discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, age, or national origin in accordance with the principles of the Olympic Charter and values." states Dr Tamas Ajan, IWF President and Honorary IOC member, "This rule modification has been considered in the spirit of fairness, equality and inclusion."

 The rule change is also a peaceable act of good common sense that corrects something that unnecessarily separated us one from another.  It makes our world just that much better than it was before.  In a fracturing world, this is exactly the kind of thing we need.  As Christians, we sense the work of the Spirit in this event and are thankful.  Amen.

For a background article on Abdullah and her dream to compete for the U. S. in the Olympics see (here).