10AR15-39

Apologia Report 15:39 (1,044)

November 11, 2010

Subject: "Christians willing to bend basic doctrines"

In this issue:

ISLAM - how broad is the woeful ignorance over identifying the root problem?

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM - new book finds that more Christians are "willing to bend basic doctrines in the name of interfaith amity"

+ "can bland religious faith be expected to last?"

WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT - a welcome African analysis of the problem

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ISLAM

"Is It Islamic or Islamist? The West's confusion spells trouble" by Murad Sezer -- briefly covers Europe's trouble in identifying the solution to its ongoing conflict over Islam.

Sezer ends: "If Western intellectuals do not get rid of this confusion now, we are headed down a dangerous path. Common people in the West will start to bundle all Muslims with Islamists, picking a potentially losing battle with one quarter of humanity. This clash of civilizations is what Al Qaeda wanted to trigger with the attacks on September 11. The West and its intellectuals should be smarter than Al Qaeda." (If only.) Newsweek, Oct 22 '10, n.p. <www.tinyurl.com/28zor9y>

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell [1] -- Robert Wright begins his largely uncritical review by observing that plenty of recent headlines contradict the authors' "declaration, in the book's first chapter, that 'America peacefully combines a high degree of religious devotion with tremendous religious diversity.' And it seems to render moot one of their main goals: to illuminate the source of this interfaith tolerance." Wright agrees that such a goal is "urgently relevant to the recent surge in interfaith tension."

Wright admits that the big-picture approach to "America's tradition of peaceful religious coexistence is largely about harmony among Christian denominations...."

Examining the book, we find that the "topics covered range from the dynamics of conversion to the role in religion of gender, ethnicity and class to the question of how civically engaged believers are."

The authors find that "Today churchgoing Catholics and Protestants ... tend toward conservatism on social issues, opposing a liberal coalition that includes lapsed Catholics, mainline Protestants of often modest devoutness and growing legions of the avowedly nonreligious. Putnam and Campbell write, 'By the 2000s, how religious a person is had become more important as a political dividing line than which denomination he or she belonged to.'"

Among other questions, the authors ask: "Why are Newt Gingrich and other politicians who aim to harness fear of Muslims directing their message toward evangelicals with, apparently, some success?

"The answer may lie in the final chapter. [B]elievers seem willing to bend basic doctrines in the name of interfaith amity. Most Christians, even most evangelical Christians, believe that non-Christians can go to heaven, notwithstanding the New Testament's repeated assertions that Christ is the only path to the Kingdom of God."

What apparently lies behind this is exposure to the opposition - that "getting to know an adherent of an otherwise alien faith tends to humanize the aliens." Results from surveys the authors have taken suggest that "gaining an evangelical friend leads to a warmer assessment of evangelicals - by seven degrees on a 'feeling thermometer,' to be exact - and gaining a nonreligious friend brings four degrees of added warmth toward the nonreligious. ...

"This is the authors' posited explanation for why Buddhists, Mormons and Muslims get particularly low feeling-thermometer readings.

"...54 percent of evangelicals say non-Christians can go to heaven, only 35 percent say Muslims can. ...

"There are two basic schools of thought on religious strife. Essentialists believe that religions have a firm character, grounded in Scripture and theology and doctrine, and that religious conflicts are thus deep-seated and enduring. The more optimistic view is that clashing beliefs aren't the big problem; underlying the conflict, and driving it, are less ethereal and in some cases more pliable issues: economic grievances or insecurities, resentment of perceived arrogance, fears of domination (like the perceived threat of Western cultural or political hegemony, or of worldwide Shariah).

"Putnam and Campbell are closer to the second camp. ... This view, though common in academia, is hardly gospel among the public at large. But it may turn out to be gospel in the literal sense of the term: good news." New York Times, Oct 8 '10, n.p. <www.tinyurl.com/2ejzonh>.

A counterpoint to the above appears in The Week (Oct 29 '10, p26), wherein we read that "Politics is chasing a whole generation away from America's churches.... At least that's what Robert Putnam and David Campbell discovered while conducting a thorough new study of the role of religion in Americans' lives. [T]he share of young Americans claiming no religious affiliation has jumped from 10 percent in 1990 to 27 percent today. [I]t was clear that the religious Right had made many young adults uneasy with the very idea of becoming churchgoers.

... Putnam and Campbell never flatly state the clear implication of their findings: that religion 'is most compatible with a diverse, democratic society if people regard it as disposable.' But the idea is there. ...

"While Putnam and Campbell clearly favor 'easy-going, non-threatening, non-boat-rocking religion,' they never say whether such bland religious faith can be expected to last. In disparaging more ardent believers, they risk devaluing 'the very thing they are trying to defend.'"

WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT

"The Prosperity Gospel: All That Glitters Is Not Gold" by Daniel Bourdanné -- rare and welcome evidence that the Lausanne missions community continues to address this oft-ignored global menace. This paper was written from an African perspective as an overview of the topic to be discussed within The Lausanne Global Conversation <conversation.lausanne.org>. Bourdanné is the General Secretary of IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students) and the author of L’évangile de la prospérité, une menace pour l’Église africaine (The Prosperity Gospel, a Threat for the African Church).

Bourdanné focuses on "Prosperity movement theology" with an emphasis on "questions that need to be asked when we talk of the Prosperity movement." For example: "It is easy to see that the principle of [Kenneth] Hagin and his followers is close to traditional African rites, which insist on the right formula or gesture. Anyone working with African churches in which the Prosperity Gospel is preached ... will note the importance of ritual in prayers. A handkerchief is given in order to pass on apostolic authority, and candles, salt and other objects are used. Certain prayers have special rituals attached, for example placing a hand on the part of the body that hurts, complying with certain prohibitions, fasting etc. The leaders of this movement prescribe things similar to animistic rites." <www.tinyurl.com/2g3dosv>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell (Simon & Schuster, 2010, hardcover, 688 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2efogmp>

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