didaskalos's Blog

Evangelicals are often considered to be ignorant and uneducated people who force their religious beliefs on others. The article by D. Michael Lindsay, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford University Press, 2007), begs to differ.

To read the whole article in it's context, click on the following link: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i35/35b01201.htm >

Here are a few excerpts for that article.

In 1993, Michael Weiskopf wrote an article for The Washington Post in which he described evangelicals in the United States as "poor, uneducated, and easy to command." Although the comment provoked outrage from evangelicals, Weiskopf's assertion was not without merit. At the time, only 15 percent of evangelicals held college or graduate degrees. Even though religious conservatives dominated higher education at the turn of the 20th century, by 1993 they had lost their influence within the academy.

Yet on campuses across the country, evangelicalism is rebounding. Evangelical students make up larger and larger portions of the incoming classes at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. They join robust campus-ministry groups that sponsor everything from debates to spring-break "mission" trips. And while they still fall slightly below the national average, the percentage of evangelicals receiving bachelor's degrees has climbed 133 percent from 1976 to 2004, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Corporation, more than doubling the change within the general population.

What is driving this seismic change in American higher education, and what does it mean? To answer those questions, I spent the last five years interviewing 360 evangelicals who are members of the nation's political, business, and cultural elites — perhaps the most comprehensive examination of religion at this level of society ever conducted.

Ethnic diversity also matters. Whereas Asian-Americans account for only 4 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 15 percent of the student enrollment at Ivy League institutions. Many of these students are evangelical. In fact, I found that 90 percent of the members of the Yale chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ are Asian-American. In the 1980s, the same chapter was 100 percent white. The changing demography of incoming classes at institutions such as Duke, MIT, and Yale has played a significant role in the evangelical ascendancy.

At the same time, evangelical scholarship has become part of the intellectual mainstream. ... Evangelical scholars have become particularly noticeable in disciplines that address religious questions, but respected scholars in other fields have been coming forward in recent years to talk about their evangelical faith. The most conspicuous example is Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, who wrote the best-selling The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006).

The "opening of the evangelical mind," as Alan Wolfe has aptly called it, may be surprising to some, but it is not unprecedented. Indeed anti-intellectualism within Christianity is actually an anomaly of the 20th century. ... History is on the side of evangelical intellectual strivings.

Evangelicals have reinvigorated theistic approaches to philosophy and paid attention to subjects in political science and sociology that were, for too long, overlooked by others. ...  In a column for The Chronicle, Stanley Fish wrote, "When Jacques Derrida died, I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion." In the same article, Fish contended that religion must not be simply studied at arm's length, but must be considered as a viable "candidate for the truth."

Forty years ago, conventional sociological wisdom said that society would secularize as it modernized. Such predictions were dead wrong. Levels of education and development have risen sharply around the world, while at the same time religion's influence has grown. It's time for the academy to come to grips with this dynamic.

Unlike fundamentalists who retreat from pluralistic environments, evangelicals relish the chance to engage people who hold different beliefs. This could present an opportunity for deeper understanding on our campuses, but it will happen only if we bring evangelicals into our classroom discussions. Just as the debate surrounding intelligent design has forced many biologists to engage religious topics in the classroom, so will rising religious pluralism.

Evangelicals are the most discussed but least understood group in American society. ... Other observers conclude that evangelicals principally serve their own interests, but Allen D. Hertzke's persuasive Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004) shows that evangelicals work as vigorously to protect the religious freedom of Buddhists and Jews around the world as they do that of their fellow Christians. A number of journalists and pundits have written about evangelicals since 2000, but the most interesting and helpful works have been academic studies based on empirical research. (Pick up one of those instead of a best-selling polemic to learn more about the subject. Hint: Avoid any work that includes "theocracy" in the title.)

Nearly every evangelical scholar I encountered embodies a "cosmopolitan" evangelical faith. They are "worldly" believers, in the best sense of the term. They regularly rub shoulders with people of different faiths and of no faith at all. They aim not to "take back" the country for their faith, but simply want their faith to be seen as reasonable, genuine, and attractive. This cosmopolitan style of faith has helped evangelicals gain a seat at the table within the arts world. Evangelicals who have succeeded, such as the visual artist Makoto Fujimura — the youngest person ever named to the National Council on the Arts — don't desire to impose their moral vision on the rest of the artistic community, but at the same time, they don't want to exclude their faith from the work they do. The same can be said of evangelicals within the groves of academe. Their rise into the halls of power is significant, but not menacing. Cosmopolitan evangelicals will not overturn the apple cart. They want civil discourse, not a culture war.

And we can learn from them. Indeed, in our understanding of evangelicals and the evangelical movement, we could all benefit from a more cosmopolitan outlook.

What are your thoughts and comments about the article or the above selected excerpts?

This article is really long, but amusing, informative, and encouraging … well worth the read. Western media often doesn’t have access to this type of thing and, when it is discovered, don’t consider it “news worthy.” I personally thing that it is very revelant.

What do you think?

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTUwY2QyNjA0Njcw
MjExMzI2ZmJiZTEzN2U1YjYyZjE

Islam’s ‘Public Enemy #1’
Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire.

By Raymond Ibrahim

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV”). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme — from the pressing to the esoteric — often expressed as a question (e.g., “Is jihad an obligation for all Muslims?”; “Are women inferior to men in Islam?”; “Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” “Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary according to sharia?”). To answer the question, Botros meticulously quotes — always careful to give sources and reference numbers — from authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then from the canonical sayings of the prophet — the Hadith; and finally from the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present — the illustrious ulema.

Typically, Botros’s presentation of the Islamic material is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open — and humbly invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their response be based on “al-dalil we al-burhan,” — “evidence and proof,” one of his frequent refrains — not shout-downs or sophistry.

More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening silence — which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros’s conclusions often find themselves forced to agree with him — which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Botros played the key role in exposing this obscure and embarrassing issue and forcing the ulema to respond. Another guest on Hala Sirhan’s show, Abd al-Fatah, slyly indicated that the entire controversy was instigated by Botros: “I know you all [fellow panelists] watch that channel and that priest and that none of you [pointing at Abd al-Muhdi] can ever respond to him, since he always documents his sources!”

Incapable of rebutting Botros, the only strategy left to the ulema (aside from a rumored $5-million bounty on his head) is to ignore him. When his name is brought up, they dismiss him as a troublemaking liar who is backed by — who else? — international “Jewry.” They could easily refute his points, they insist, but will not deign to do so. That strategy may satisfy some Muslims, but others are demanding straightforward responses from the ulema.

The most dramatic example of this occurred on another famous show on the international station, Iqra. The host, Basma — a conservative Muslim woman in full hijab — asked two prominent ulema, including Sheikh Gamal Qutb, one-time grand mufti of al-Azhar University, to explain the legality of the Koranic verse (4:24) that permits men to freely copulate with captive women. She repeatedly asked: “According to sharia, is slave-sex still applicable?” The two ulema would give no clear answer — dissembling here, going off on tangents there. Basma remained adamant: Muslim youth were confused, and needed a response, since “there is a certain channel and a certain man who has discussed this issue over twenty times and has received no response from you.”

The flustered Sheikh Qutb roared, “low-life people like that must be totally ignored!” and stormed off the set. He later returned, but refused to admit that Islam indeed permits sex-slaves, spending his time attacking Botros instead. When Basma said “Ninety percent of Muslims, including myself, do not understand the issue of concubinage in Islam and are having a hard time swallowing it,” the sheikh responded, “You don’t need to understand.” As for Muslims who watch and are influenced by Botros, he barked, “Too bad for them! If my son is sick and chooses to visit a mechanic, not a doctor — that’s his problem!”

But the ultimate reason for Botros’s success is that — unlike his Western counterparts who criticize Islam from a political standpoint — his primary interest is the salvation of souls. He often begins and concludes his programs by stating that he loves all Muslims as fellow humans and wants to steer them away from falsehood to Truth. To that end, he doesn’t just expose troubling aspects of Islam. Before concluding every program, he quotes pertinent biblical verses and invites all his viewers to come to Christ.

Botros’s motive is not to incite the West against Islam, promote “Israeli interests,” or “demonize” Muslims, but to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia to the spirituality of Christianity. Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying — not secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. — must be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has been fighting fire with fire.

— Raymond Ibrahim is editor of The Al Qaeda Reader.

It seems that there is an attempt to relegate anything related to FAITH to the unseen and irrevalent pages of MyFaithOrlando. Faith should be revelant and have and impact on News, Politics, and Entertainment. By placing the label of "Faith" on a given blog topic immediately places in the the obscure recesses of the blogsphere. This will be the only post that I send there.

Are there others who place the "Faith" category on their blogs? If so, do you get any or many comments? Since they don't appear on the Community Pages why do you post to MyFaithOrlando?

Ben Stein has put out a movie that accuses academia of hostilities toward anyone who does not embrace Darwinism. http://expelledthemovie.com/

I have been amazed at the ridicule and accusations of anti-intellectualism directed against anyone who doesn't bow down and blindly embrace macro evolutionary theory. You don't even have to mention God for professors to burst into tirades against religious nuts. Rather than dealing with the challenge to their interpretation of the evidence, it seem that they play the religious card rather quickly.

Have you experienced similar hostilities in higher education for rejecting the presuppositional foundations of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism?

There is a storm on the horizon. This storm threatens to use our liberties as Americans to rob us of our freedoms. The storm is called Islam. Why should atheists and agnostics join with Christians to combat this menacing threat? After all, aren't Christians the enemy too of those who don't believe in God, a god, gods, or don’t' know what they believe? On the contrary, biblical Christians should be considered as best friends to the atheists and agnostics even though their beliefs are very different.

Christianity seeks to persuade others to embrace their faith. It is not by force, but by love and a winsome lifestyle, moral excellence, and integrity that the imperfect Christian seeks to share, as a beggar who has found bread tells others, where they can come to have their hunger satisfied. We are unapologetic in expressing our desire for others to know Jesus Christ personally, however, it is always and only by persuasion that this can be done.

If Islam becomes the dominant religious influence in this country, all of our precious freedoms are at risk. We as Christians have fought and died for our country's freedoms that guarantee that an atheist is free NOT to believe in God. Islam offers no such guarantee. In fact, Islam promises severe persecution of those who don't believe in Allah.

So my atheist and agnostic friends, while you may disagree with Christianity, it is not your enemy; Islam is your enemy. Join with the Christians to oppose this threat to our precious freedom of religion as Americans that allows us to agree to disagree. Yes, we want to influence society, but the religion of Islam is satisfied with nothing less than imposition, domination, and forced submission of our culture and our way of life.

I was going through the "all blogs" pages/archives to see if some topics that were on the community page had any further comments. I came across Mater's blog about Di being punished and removed for comments she made. I was curious so I look back further  and was shocked at what I discovered.

 It seems that pages are repeated (containing the same blogs) effectively burying blogs deeper in the pages. I also notice that one of my blogs that had recently made the community page was nowhere to be found. The subject of that infamous blog ...? MORMONS are REALLY POLYTHEISTS. I mentioned their Public Relations machine. Some commented that it is dangerous to mess with them. I guess FOX is scared as they removed the blog everywhere except for my newsroom.

If they keep this up, they will purge their bloggers and their news viewers. I had previously told friends about FOX News at 10, but if this keeps up and the gag order discourage open debate, I'll find another venue.


 

The other day, I was reading in the East Orlando community newspaper that a company, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. LDS or Mormons), had purchased some property on S. Alafaya Trail that would allow the completion of the Innovation Way. This article caused me to reflect on the Mormon Church.

My first thought was how the Mormon Church Public Relations juggernaut influences how they are perceived by the community. They produce great commercials that promote family, are known for their clean cut young people who serve as missionaries, and tend to be politically conservative pro-American patriots.

My experience with the young men in black pants, white shirts, riding bicycles and wearing a black name badge does not inspire good feelings. What is it with a young man half my age trying to insist that I call him “Elder So_and_so?” This attempt to gain the authoritative high ground over the unsuspecting person masks the unorthodox, non-Christian divergences of the LDS church’s heretical teaching.

The Mormon Church owning companies reminds me of the Rev. Sung Yung Moon of the cult know as “Moonies,” who did jail time for his fraud, it that he promoted special “marriages” and “family” much like we see in Mormonism.

This leads to the content found in the “subject line.” The reason that Mormons promote “eternal marriage” is because such a marriage is essential for a good Mormon’s role in the next life … to become gods and goddesses where they will rule over their worlds and their spiritual children (produced from the eternal marriage union). This basically makes Mormons polytheists. They teach a form of spiritual evolution to godhood saying that … as we are God once was, and as He is, one day we will become.

What have been your encounters with the Mormon public relations machine and religious double-speak (using Christian language but different definitions of terms) that covers over their dubious origins and non-Christian teachings?