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Apologia Report 13:10
March 13, 2008
Subject: Colleges respond to growing public interest in Mormonism
In this issue:
FICTION, CHRISTIAN - a new and noteworthy effort reviewed
ISLAM - adopting banking practices which follow the Koran has enabled Malaysia to gain strength
+ a helpful primer on the "caliphate debate" from U.S. News
MORMONISM - the growth of higher education's interest in the LDS
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FICTION, CHRISTIAN
In its review of James Choung's True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In [2], Publishers Weekly (Feb 4 '08, p39) offers a significant appraisal: "Brian McLaren started a genre of fiction [1] in which a disenchanted evangelical meets a wizened ethnic teacher of a new sort of Christianity, prompting a second conversion to a faith that is more world savvy, compassionate and appealing. In Choung's version, a college student in Seattle named Caleb struggles to share the gospel (and a bit more) with his friend Anna. While the narrative runs the risk of falling into stereotype (and often does resort to evangelical catchphrases), Choung manages to make readers care about his characters' religious and romantic fates. Its best moments are Caleb's wrestling with the relationship between his Korean ethnic identity and his faith. Choung concludes the book in his own voice, with a diagram designed to help an individual share the gospel with another on the surface of a napkin. While the faith presented is indeed more passionate about the environment and 'social justice' than many evangelicals are wont to be, the goal of a more effective one-on-one evangelism is hardly revolutionary. The book will appeal to readers of McLaren and others for whom 'vampire Christianity,' a phrase Choung's real-life mentor Dallas Willard uses to describe a faith reduced to a bit of blood shed on one's behalf, has become untenable."
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ISLAM
"Profit versus the prophet: Islamic law has made Muslims into creative bankers" by Joshua Kurlantzick -- evidence of growing strength within the realm of moderate Islam. "After 9/11, many leading Muslim investors ... pulled out of the United States because they feared their money would be targeted. Finally, the growing power of Islamists put pressure on Muslim investors to save according to Koranic principles.
"And these investors have. In 2006, there were 250 Islamic mutual stock funds worldwide with combined assets of $300 billion, according to Moody's. Overall, the Islamic finance industry may be growing as much as 15% annually. Deutsche Bank, HSBC, UBS and other banking giants have established Islamic finance subsidiaries or separate Islamic banks that offer products that comply with Sharia.
"But it is Malaysia that stands at the forefront of this industry, which was virtually nonexistent before 9/11. Malaysian leaders recognize that Islamic finance allows Muslims to assert their religious identity without having to become involved in poisonous Islamist politics. ...
"Malaysia's relative religious moderation and its progressive government, which is less focused on religious issues than some Arab regimes, have allowed it to push the limits of what is permitted in Islamic banking. Its central bank has established a national Sharia board of scholars to approve banking products. The board has established the benchmarks needed to standardize the industry, ensure that Islamic banks meet international financial rules and reassure customers that they are getting truly Islamic products. But it also has been progressive enough to consider how Malaysia could adapt Islam to such cutting-edge financial ideas as derivatives. ...
"Some of the harshest criticism has come from Muslim reformers, some of whom have said that Islamic finance could serve as a bridge between globalization and Islam as well as a means of promoting Arab Muslim development." Los Angeles Times, Feb 10 '08, pM11. <http://tinyurl.com/3956c4>
"Caliph Wanted: Why an old Islamic institution resonates with many Muslims today" by Jay Tolson -- begins: "Osama bin Laden and his fellow jihadists repeatedly claim that the ultimate goal of their violent struggle is to restore the Islamic caliphate, the system of political-religious leadership that originated with the first successor to the prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century. But they are not alone in favoring its return. A number of nonviolent Islamic organizations ... champion the same cause. And more than two thirds of people recently polled in four Muslim nations say they support the idea of unifying all Muslim countries in 'a single Islamic state or caliphate.'
"The idea of the caliphate is a poorly understood, vaguely threatening concept in the West. ...
"'Ninety-four percent of Muslim history took place under the caliphate,' says Jamal Harwood, a former chairman of Hizb ut-Tahrir's London-based executive committee, giving perhaps the simplest reason his party works to restore the institution that Kemal Ataturk - the founder of modern, secular Turkey - abolished in 1924.
"But what does the caliphate really mean to those who claim to favor its return...?
"While most scholars and analysts conclude that it is mainly ... convenient political rhetoric, a slogan and rallying cry for those seeking power or at least change ... they also say that the 'caliphate debate' goes to the heart of the current crisis of authority and leadership in the Islamic world. That crisis is complicated by a view held by many Muslims, and particularly by Islamists, that political and religious authorities are ultimately inseparable." Tolson explains the history behind this assumption.
"Historically, in fact, the caliphate model poses huge problems, including the crucial schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that is now playing out so dramatically in Iraq. ...
"Ebrahim Moosa, a Muslim legal scholar at Duke University, entertains an intriguing idea: a caliphal synod, or assembly of thinkers, with representatives of the laity as well as members of the ulema, ... a social class consisting of learned scholars [which] assumed the dominant role of interpreting the sharia ... collectively recognized as the successor to the teaching authority of the Prophet. Yet Moosa's hypothetical 'caliphate redux' cannot withstand even his own pessimism about the real cause of the crisis of authority in the Muslim world: corrupt, authoritarian regimes. 'I'm afraid that a caliphal body would be used by existing governments,' he says, 'and caliphal authority would just end up reinforcing tyranny in religious disguise.'" U.S. News & World Report, Jan 14 '08, pp38-40. <http://tinyurl.com/2er9jw>
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MORMONISM
Have you noticed how often this topic has appeared in AR over the past year? Mormonism has been in the news a lot. It comes as no surprise, then, to discover the following Boston Globe story (Feb 19 '08, n.p.): "Colleges scramble to offer curriculum on Mormon religion" by Michael Paulson. Here we learn that a "decision by Harvard to add [the course] 'Mormonism and the American Experience' reflects what appears to be an uptick of interest in Mormonism in higher education nationally.
"Two non-Mormon universities, Claremont Graduate University in California and Utah State College, have established the first endowed chairs in Mormon studies, and the University of Wyoming is considering taking a similar step. The American Academy of Religion, which is the largest association of religion scholars worldwide, has established a new group for specialists in Mormon studies."
Paulson notes that "Richard L. Bushman, a prominent scholar of Mormonism and a professor of history emeritus at Columbia University ... is scheduled to become the new Mormon studies chair this fall at Claremont. ...
"Mormonism has at times been a difficult field to study, particularly for Mormon scholars, because the church has excommunicated scholars - in 1993 and 2000 - who expressed opinions the church viewed as dissent, particularly on women's issues. And the church has at times been criticized for overly restrictive policies governing access to its archives.
"And Bushman said that persuading Mormon philanthropists to contribute to Mormon studies professorships at non-Mormon universities has been a challenge, in part because some potential donors fear the possibility that some of the scholarship they fund might be critical of their church.
"But church officials, who have become considerably more aggressive about seeking to explain their faith since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, say they welcome the academic research.
"'We're certainly pleased with the level of interest - we know there will be some lumps we'll have to take along the way, but that's part of the process,' said Elder W. Rolfe Kerr, the [LDS church's] commissioner of church education who formerly served as the higher education commissioner in Utah." Let the lumps begin. <http://tinyurl.com/ysxfpz>
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Sources, Digital:
1 - <http://tinyurl.com/yqee6a>
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Sources, Monographs:
2 - True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In, by James Choung (IVP, Apr 30 '08, paperback, 224 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0830836098/apologiareport>
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