While more Americans are not necessarily going to church or synagogue, Gallup shows that religion has become important in more lives since the attacks. In a poll conducted September 21 and 22, 64 percent said religion is “very important” to them. This is the highest percentage in the survey since 1965. In recent years, the percentage has been in the high 50s and topped out at 62 percent in 1998.
Despite survey results, anecdotal evidence continues to point to an upsurge in America’s religious life, church attendance, and a desire for prayer. Last Sunday, 20,000 people transformed New York’s Yankee Stadium into an interfaith chapel. A Milwaukee television station is reporting that Bibles, Qur’ans, and books on faith are seeing huge sale increases, and selling out in some stores.
Media coverage is also focusing on the “life-affirming,” hands-on, and enormously demanding ministry facing ministers, priests, and rabbis, as Americans now need both consoling and answers to tough questions. Newspapers have picked up on the religious issues that the nation is now wrestling with: “Where was God?” “Where was Satan?” and “What should we be praying for?“
Shelter Now trial could resume tomorrow Taliban representatives in Afghanistan have said the trial of two Americans held on charges of preaching Christianity will resume Saturday as long as their attorney, a 26-year-old Pakistani hired by their parents is prepared.
In August, Dayna Curry, 29, and Heather Mercer, 24, were arrested along with four Germans, two Australians, and 16 Afghans when the ruling Taliban shut down the aid organization Shelter Now. Their trial began last month but was suspended September 11. According to the Associated Press, the eight foreign workers if convicted, face penalties ranging from expulsion to death.
Question the Pope’s health? Come see for yourself After a week of public appearances that at times showed the effects that Pakinson’s Disease is having on the pope, The Vatican last night gave journalists an unpredented opportunity to judge his health for themselves.
The New York Times reports: “Presumably to counter a rash of recent stories about the pope’s worsening health, Vatican officials suddenly invited the 60 reporters traveling with him this week to file one by one to the front of the plane, sit next to him for a minute, say hello, and have a photo taken.”
The pope, 81, has spent the week in Armenia and Kazakhistan delivering prayers and a message of tolerance. He ended the tour yesterday with a speech in Yerevan in which he called for the international community to make “a choice between good and evil, darkness and light, humanity and inhumanity, truth and falsehood.”
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Responding to the attack:
- Forgiveness comes after repentance | Christian, Jewish language has important differences (Berel Wein, The Jerusalem Post)
- CCM community responds to attack on America | Many Christians in the music industry have been busy presenting the comfort of Christ. (Crosswalk.com)
- Couples want peace at home | Divorce case dismissals soar here since Sept. 11 (Houston Chronicle)
- A spared chapel stirs talk of miracle | St. Paul’s Chapel, Manhattan’s oldest public building, doesn’t even have a broken window after attack on neighboring World Trade Center (The Boston Globe)
Religion and politics after the attack:
- It’s not about religion | Don’t be so quick to blame religion for warfare (Vincent Carroll, National Review Online)
- Talibans and the Pope’s concern | We do not think religion has anything to do with the current world crisis. But the Pope does. (Vanguard, Lagos)
- Is God on our side? Or is he on theirs? | It becomes too easy to bless our causes with unqualified divine approbation only to find ourselves made over in the likeness of those enemies who have injured us (John J. Thatamanil, Los Angeles Times)
- God wills it? No, God doesn’t | Must we define this conflict in the cosmic—and self-justifying—language of good versus evil? (James Carroll, The Boston Globe)
- Which God blesses America? | Have we created a convenient God in our own image or discovered the one who is there? (Joe Marek, The Orlando Sentinel)
- Faith and the secular state | The West needs to overcome its insistence that the nation-state must be secular to be legitimate (Lamin Sanneh, The New York Times)
- Church-state separation | Now more than ever, America is well served by those who say that government must not be the tool of any one religion, or even of any group of religions (The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin)
- No place for the godless in prayer offensive | We should find a place at our multicultural table for atheists and secular humanists (Sam McManis, San Francisco Chronicle)
Pacifism:
- Peace testimony | In these trying times, and those ahead, Quakers speak for nonviolent solutions (The Sun, Baltimore)
- By any name, it’s still war, pacifists say | Calling campaign “Infinite Justice” is idolatry, say Christian peacemakers (The Sun, Baltimore)
More on Falwell and Robertson:
- Televangelist, fundamentalists believe their strict morality is the only answer | If there is a “holy war” in the world today, it is not between Islam and Christianity, nor Afghanistan and the United States. It is between secularism and religious fundamentalism in all its forms (Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle)
- Forgiving Falwell | As a country that’s more tolerant and forgiving then ever, it’s only fair to take him at his word (The Daily News, Los Angeles)
- Pat Robertson’s gold | What, pray tell, does the Good Lord make of Pat Robertson’s gold-mining venture in Liberia with Charles Taylor, international pariah and one of the most ruthless, greedy and terror-producing heads of state in all of sub-Saharan Africa? (Colbert I. King, The Washington Post)
Church and state:
- Keep church and state separated in Georgia | Bush’s faith-based initiative spills over into state battle (Editorial, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
- Non-believers would get equal space on Ringgold public walls | After the City Council approved displaying framed copies of the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, they will now hang empty frames “for those who believe in nothing.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
- Also: Georgia town posts Ten Commandments | Councilman not worried about offending non-Christians because “because we don’t have any of them here.” (Associated Press)
- ‘God bless America’ signs prompt complaints in Oklahoma school district | Church-state separation suits threatened (Associated Press)
Popular culture:
- Lifehouse’s Wade lets his faith speak for itself | Lead singer Jason Wade deliberately writes his songs so nonbelievers will be comfortable but devout worshipers can apply the lyrics to their faith (Boston Herald)
- Megiddo godawful | This is apocalyptic gobbledygook (Reuters)
- Occult fears prompt store owner to ban Harry Potter toys | Britain’s largest privately-owned toy retailer may lose £500,000 because of decision (The Daily Telegraph)
- Also: Toy shop bans Harry Potter (BBC)
- Harry Potter and Curious George pop up out of book | Group under fire for using them (Chicago Tribune)
- Play changed author’s views on religion | Playwright David Rambo said his play on a power struggle within a Southern Baptist church changed his negative ideas about organized religion. (The Cincinnati Post)
Church life:
- Baptized Anglicans are now a minority in England | “Religion is being passed down like a recessive gene,” says sociologist (The Daily Telegraph)
- Church wants tombstone back | Parish accidentally sold gravemarker of 12th century knight (The Times, London)
- Churches ‘need an extrovert’ to attract the men | “Sacramental” churches should go for neurotic introverts, says Evangelical Alliance study (The Times, London)
Related Elsewhere
See our past Weblog updates:September 27 | 26 | 25 | 24
September 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17
September 14b | 14a | 13 | 12 | 10
September 7 | 6 | 5 | 4
August 31 | 30 | 29 | 28 | 27
August 24 | 23 | 22 | 20
August 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 |13
August 10 | 9 | 8 | 7
