|
|
Religious profile: Population (last updated October 2001) (back to top)
Federal law bars the U.S. Census from asking about the religious identity of the American population, which means that any religious profile has to be calculated and estimated from other sources, such as academics, institutions, and other groups.
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York has conducted two surveys of religious identification, first in 1990 and again in 2001, both based on random digit-dialed telephone calls (113,723 persons questioned in 1990, 50,281 in 2001). Here are some highlights from these National Surveys of Religious Identification:
- Christians comprised 86 percent of the population in 1990, and 77 percent in 2001. In 2001, Catholics made up 24.5 percent of the population (50.8 million), Baptists 16.3 percent (33.8 million), Protestants with no denomination specified 2.2 percent (4.6 million), and Methodists 6.8 percent (14.2 million).
- Non-Christians comprised 3.3 percent of the population in 1990 and 3.7 percent in 2001. In 2001, Jewish adherents comprised 1.3 percent of the population (2.8 million), Muslims 0.5 percent (about 1.1 million), and Buddhists 0.5 percent (1.1 million).
- Adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification comprised 8 percent of the population in 1990 and 14 percent in 2001.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, several researchers, including the NRSI, have tried to estimate the Muslim population in the United States. For example, the CUNY researchers involved in the NSRI found a total national figure of 2.2 million adult Muslims, and just under 3 million total Muslims, after adjusting their own figures for possible sampling errors.
Tom Smith, a survey researcher commissioned by the American Jewish Committee, reported in October 2001 that estimates of the Muslim population varied widely from less than 4 million to more than 7 million, were rarely based on credible scientific methodology, and were undergoing inflation in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The best figures, he reported, put the adult Muslim population in 2000 at 0.67 percent of the population (1.4 million) and the total Muslim population at 1.886 million.
Sources: Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar, American Religious Identification Survey 2001, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar, Profile of the US Muslim Population, ARIS Report No. 2 (October 2001), available on-line here. Tom W. Smith, Estimating the Muslim Population in the United States, The American Jewish Committee. Other religion resources are available at Adherents.com.
Religious profile: Attitudes (last updated December 29, 2001) (back to top)
Importance of religion. According to polling data conducted for the National Election Studies, about 75 percent of people polled believe that religion is an important part of their life; 37 percent said they looked to religious guidance "a great deal" in their day-to-day living.
Truth of Bible. In the NES study, half the people polled (49 percent in 1990) agreed with the statement "The Bible is God's word and all it says is true." About 38 percent agreed that "the Bible was written by men inspired by God but it contains some human errors." Only 3 percent agreed that "the Bible was written by men who lived so long ago that it is worth very little today."
About half the people polled in 2000 (49 percent) agreed that the Bible was "the Word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word." About 35 percent said that the Bible is "the actual Word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." Only 12 percent said the Bible was a book written by men and is not the Word of God.
Creationism and Evolution.According to a 1999 Gallup poll, only 9 percent of Americans believe in a purely scientific view of evolution. About 40 percent believe evolution did occur, but with God's guidance (theistic evolution, an aspect of a modernist view of Christianity), and about 47 percent believe that God created humans in the last 10,000 years (a Fundamentalist view of Christianity). About 68 percent of Americans polled favored teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools, and about 40 percent favored teaching creationism instead of evolution.
Scientists and other countries see evolution much differently. Most scientists (55%) see evolution happened without God, 40 percent believe in theistic evolution, and only 5 percent see the Bible literally, according to a 1982 Gallup poll. And in Great Britain, for example, only 7 percent believe God literally created humanity in the last 10,000 years.
Views on homosexuality. According to a Brookings Institute study of Pew Research data conducted between 1994 and 1996, about half the nation believes that homosexuality should be discouraged (49 percent), with a slightly smaller number favoring acceptance (46 percent). This breaks down somewhat along religious lines.
Most committed evangelical Protestants (representing 16.7 percent of nation) believe homosexuality should be discouraged (78 percent, with 19 percent for acceptance). Most secular people (representing 15.5 percent of nation) believe homosexuality should be accepted (70 percent, with 26 percent opposed). Committed Catholics generally track the nation overall, and Jews generally accept homosexuality (70 percent, with 26 percent opposed).
Sources: National Election Studies, available on-line here. Gallup News Service, Public Favorable to Creationism (Feb. 14, 2001), available on-line here. Andrew Kohut, et. al., The Diminishing Divide: religion's changing role in American politics (Brookings Institution Press, 2000).
The Establishment Clause (updated August 15, 2002) (back to top)
Under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"; see full text here), the government's ability to endorse or support religious activities is limited. How far the limitations go is subject to constitutional scrutiny, often under a test set out in the Supreme Court case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
Under the Lemon test, a statute or governmental action must meet three criteria in order to be permissible under the Establishment Clause. The statute or action must (1) have a secular purpose, (2) its principal or primary effect must not advance nor inhibit religion, and (3) it must not foster "an excessive government entangling with religion." Variations of the Lemon test have arisen over time, such as the endorsement analysis used for determining the constitutionality of public religious displays.
That being said, the Establishment Clause does not prohibit purely religious activities or speech by individuals, and it does not eliminate religion from schools and other public settings. Students can pray or read their Bibles in school as long as they are not engaged in school activities or instruction. Teachers can still teach about religion and the Bible or the Koran, as long as they do not provide religious instruction or tell their students to believe a particular way. In fact, the Clinton administration released a set of guidelines in 1995 and a revised set in 1998 to help schools know the limits of the First Amendment and to set proper policies before any problems arose.
The Establishment Clause often comes up in several contexts, several of which are discussed below.
- School prayer (last updated August 15, 2002)
Students can pray during free time at school, and schools can even allow official moments of silence in which students can do whatever they want, including pray. However, public schools cannot require their students to recite prayers, cannot encourage students to pray during such moments of silence, and cannot offer prayers at official school ceremonies such as graduation ceremonies.
The United States Supreme Court first dealt with the issue of school prayer in the 1962 case of Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 431 (1962). At that time, a school board in New York required students to recite daily a "non-denominational" prayer, which was prepared by the New York Board of Regents and which read: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country." The Supreme Court struck down this practice, calling it a religious activity that the government could not promote. Similarly, in 1963, the Supreme Court struck down a Pennsylvania law that required students to attend a reading of Bible verses each day and to recite the Lord's Prayer unless the students were exempted by their parents.
Schools can still allow their students to pray during their free time, and can even provide moments of silence in which students can choose to pray or meditate. An Alabama law set out a one-minute period of silence "for meditation," but then changed the law so that the period of silence would be "for meditation or voluntary prayer." The Supreme Court ruled that this change violated the Establishment Clause because the change had no secular purpose and must have been enacted "to convey a message of State endorsement and promotion of prayer." Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 US 38 (1985).
Finally, school officials cannot allow or organize prayer at graduation ceremonies without violating the Establishment Clause, according to the Supreme Court's 1992 ruling in the case of Lee v. Weisman, 505 US 577. Graduation ceremonies are virtually obligatory for all students, and so they cannot be compelled to attend and participate in a religious exercise.
- Religion in the public school curriculum (last updated August 15, 2002)
Public schools can teach about the Bible or the Koran or any religious text in schools, but they cannot provide religious instruction. They can teach about the history of Christianity or Islam, and they can teach about the role of religion in the United States or the world, and they can even teach the Ten Commandments as an early form of law; they simply cannot teach students to believe any particular way.
This has come up most often with the debate over creationism and evolution. The Supreme Court has twice struck down laws that promoted creationism or restricted the teaching of evolution, first in 1968, and again in 1987.
In 1968, the Supreme Court struck down Arkansas's version of the Tennessee anti-evolution law that resulted in the Scopes monkey trial of 1927, ruling that the state's right to set a public school curriculum did not include the right to bar "the teaching of a scientific theory or doctrine where that prohibition is based upon reasons that violate the First Amendment." Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97. In 1987, the Court ruled that Louisiana's law requiring public elementary and secondary schools that taught evolution to also teach creationism violated the Lemon test and was unconstitutional because the law favored creationism and was motivated by religious purposes and because such young students were particularly susceptible to what they were taught. Edwards v Aguillard, 482 US 578.
For more on the Ten Commandments, go here. For more on evolution, go here.
- Pledge of Allegiance (last updated August 15, 2002).
When first codified in 1942 by Congress, the Pledge of Allegiance originally was "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Twelve years later, in 1954, Congress added the words "under God" after the word "nation."
In June 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for most of the Western United States, held that Congress's 1954 action was unconstitutional in a 2-1 decision that was widely criticized by the public and that will surely be appealed. See Newdow v. U.S. Congress (9th Cir. June 26, 2002). One of the judges who issued the ruling then stayed the ruling pending a decision by another panel of the Ninth Circuit, which meant that the Pledge would maintain its 1954 wording until further notice.
"The statement that the United States is a nation 'under God' is an endorsement of religion. It is a profession of religious belief, namely, a belief in monotheism," Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the majority opinion. "To recite the Pledge is not to describe the United States; instead, it is to swear allegiance to the values for which the flag stands: unity, indivisibility, liberty, justice, and - since 1953 - monotheism. The text of the official Pledge, codified in federal law, impermissibly takes a position with respect to the purely religious question of the existence and identity of God."
Dissenting from the majority opinion, Circuit Judge Ferdinand Fernandez argued that the Pledge and similar references in public life to a monotheistic, Judeo-Christian God did not threaten the First Amendment. "Such phrases as 'In God We Trust," or "under God" have no tendency to establish a religion in this country or to suppress anyone's exercise, or non-exercise of religion, except in the fevered eye of persons who most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity."
The case was brought by Michael Newdow, an atheist who sued on behalf of his daughter, who attends a public elementary school in California. California law mandates "appropriate patriotic exercises" at the start of each day, and Newdow's daughter's school specifically required the giving of the Pledge of Allegiance.
While the Supreme Court has never directly addressed the constitutionality of the current Pledge of Allegiance, it has suggested in tangentially-related cases that it would allow such references to God to stand. Nonetheless, the Court has limited the effect of the Pledge in the past. In 1943, the Court ruled that students could not be required to recite the pledge in its original wording; at the time, West Virginia threatened students who failed to recite the pledge with expulsion and with juvenile-delinquency charges. See West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
Sources: Religious Expression in Public Schools (revised May 1998), a useful guideline for what public schools can do within the limits of the Establishment Clause, was published by the U.S. Department of Education and is on-line here. Cases are available on-line via Findlaw.com. Gerald Gunther and Kathleen M. Sullivan, Constitutional Law (13th edition, Foundation Press, 1997).
Faith-Based Initiatives (last updated September 25, 2002) (back to top)
Many religious organizations have long been involved with charitable activities, and the broad goal of President George W. Bush's faith-based and community initiative is to help support them by providing greater access to federal funding.
However, several religious organizations have said that current funding restrictions based on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause (which states that Congress cannot make any law "respecting an establishment of religion") are appropriate or are only a minor problem for religious organizations, and have questioned whether making funds available to religious organizations – without increasing the overall amount of such funds – would simply take money away from similar non-religious organizations already doing the same kind of work.
President George W. Bush made his faith-based initiatives program an early priority of his administration, issuing an executive order (E.O. 13198) that specifically created Centers for Faith-Based & Community Initiatives in five Cabinet departments (Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, and Justice) and ordered them to identify "all existing barriers to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the delivery of social services."
According to the resulting report, published in August 2001, the federal government provides "very little" funding to religious organizations "relative to the size and scope of the social services they provide," and federal social-service programs have in the past exhibited a "widespread bias against faith- and community-based organizations."
This bias allegedly comes from an overly restrictive interpretation of the Establishment Clause that sees "close collaboration with religious organizations [as] legally suspect." Such an interpretation has forced religious organizations to suppress that core aspect of their organizations in order to receive federal funding and has thus denied them "full and fair" opportunity to receive federal funding, according to the report.
However, several religious organizations reported no religious-based obstacles to receiving federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the only one of the five Cabinet departments to solicit public comment before complying with Bush's executive order. HUD has regulations that prohibit federal funds from being used for religious instruction or worship, or for exerting religious influence while providing public services.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union's analysis of the 145 comments made to HUD, 81 organizations reported facing only obstacles from HUD that were not specific to religious organizations, and 35 either reported no obstacles, approved of HUD's regulations, or specifically opposed Bush's initiative. Still, 23 organizations reported facing obstacles based on their religion.
Bush's faith-based initiative grows somewhat out of a "Charitable Choice" concept that became part of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. At that time, Congress enacted some provisions to increase religious organizations' access to some welfare-related federal funding.
Congress considered a bill in 2001 that would have helped implement Bush's faith-based initiative program and expand the "Charitable Choice" concept by specifically requiring that religious organizations be treated the same as non-religious organizations in terms of seeking funding. A more controversial provision would have allowed religious organizations to receive federal funding but not be subject to certain anti-discrimination laws generally applicable to organizations receiving federal funding, which would have allowed federally-funded religious organizations to exclude members of other religions from their organizations. Both provisions were dropped in July 2001 as the bill became a more general, non-religious-specific bill to provide incentives for charitable contributions.
According to a 2001 report by the non-profit group Independent Sector, people who regularly go to religious services volunteered at a higher rate than those who did not (44 percent compared to 32 percent), and households with people who regularly attended religious services also contributed more per year than those who did not ($2,151 compared to $964).
Sources: The White House has information on faith-based initiatives on-line here, including the August 2001 report, "Report on Unlevel Playing Field: Barriers to Participation by Faith-Based and Community Organizations in Federal Social Service Programs." An August 7, 2001 press release by the American Civil Liberties Union is on-line here, along with a related report analyzing religious organizations' comments to HUD. Information about H.R. 7 in the 107th Congress, which was originally known as the Faith-Based and Community Initiative Bill, was found via the Library of Congress's legislative service on-line here. Information about Independent Sector's 2001 report is on-line here.
The Catholic Church and Sex Abuse Against Minors (last updated November 5, 2002) (back to top)
Claims of clergy sexual abuse against minors has been a topic of concern since at least the mid-1980s and especially in recent months. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the foremost organization for Catholic leaders, has made efforts on the problem since the mid-1980s, but the scandal reached new levels in early 2002 with the public admissions that various church leaders kept allegations secret and may have reassigned perpetrators to other ministries where children were present.
The Conference adopted at its June 2002 meeting of bishops two documents : a charter that admitted the Church's mistakes in handling allegations in the past and a set of "essential norms" for policies that would require dioceses to cooperate more with civil authorities and to remove priests accused of abuse from ministerial duties. Vatican officials in Rome expressed concerns about some of the "essential norms" in mid-October 2002, and a mixed commission of Conference and Vatican officials met at the end of October to reconcile the "essential norms" with the Church's existing procedures for removing a cleric.
Some of the revised "essential norms" stemming from that late October 2002 meeting include:
- Investigation of priests accused of sexual abuse before temporary removal from ministerial duties. Dioceses will investigate "promptly and objectively" when an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor is reported, and when there is sufficient evidence of abuse, officials may remove the accused from the ministry or impose restrictions. Under the Conference's June 2002 policy, dioceses would relieve accused priests from any ecclesiastical ministry or function whenever a "credible" accusation was made, and an investigation would then follow.
- Punishment for a single act of sexual abuse. A priest or deacon who commits "even a single act of sexual abuse" will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry "if the case so warrants." The Conference's June 2002 policy did not include the "escape-valve" final clause.
- Disclosure to civil authorities. Dioceses will comply with applicable civil law in reporting allegations to civil authorities. Dioceses would have been required to go even further under the Conference's June 2002 policy, in which they would be required to report "any allegation (unless canonically privileged) of sexual abuse of a person who is a currently a minor" and to cooperate with reporting cases when the person is no longer a minor.
- Limited civilian review. Lay people will comprise the majority of a review board for each diocese that will advise diocesan officials in assessing allegations of sexual abuse. In the Conference's July 2002 policy, this review board would make its own assessment of sexual abuse allegations and would report this assessment to the victim and accused, and an appellate review board comprised mostly of lay people would also have offered advice to diocesan officials.
- Definition of sexual abuse. The revised policy defines sexual abuse of a minor as "sexual molestation or sexual exploitation of a minor and other behavior by which an adult uses a minor as an object of sexual gratification." Dioceses will apply this standard not based on any civil law, but in whether the conduct violates the sixth commandment. The Conference's June 2002 policy did not define sexual abuse.
The revised "essential norms" will become particular law in the United States if they are approved by the Conference and receive the recognition of the Holy See. Two years after the norms receive such recognition, the Conference's plenary assembly will re-evaluate the norms.
The Conference's June charter and its now-revised policies stem from a meeting between United States bishops and the Vatican in late April 2002. The Pope, who reportedly initially treated the scandal as a local problem confined largely to the United States, became involved in the spring of 2002. In mid-March, the Pope referred to the scandal but only in veiled terms. He then took a more dramatic step on April 15 by summoning all cardinals in the United States for talks the following week. The April 23-24 meetings resulted in a papal statement of sympathy and with plans for new procedures to dismiss priests who have sexually abused children or pose a threat.
Various federal surveys have tried to measure the extent of child sex abuse and the characteristics of perpetrators. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey published in July 2000 shows that most offenders in cases reported to law-enforcement authorities know the victims and are usually acquaintances. In reported cases involving juveniles aged 0-17, 58.7 percent of perpetrators are acquaintances (which presumably could include a priest), 34.2 percent are family members, and 7 percent are strangers.
While recent national attention has focused on boys as victims, girls are many times more likely to be the victims of sexual abuse and assaults, according to federal surveys. About 4 out of every 10,000 male children and about 16 out of every 10,000 female children are the victim of sexual abuse by a caretaker, according to the Child Maltreatment 1999 report published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The definition of "caretaker" focuses mostly on parents and on people such as daycare workers, but is not consistent across jurisdictions.
For years, people have raised charges that they were the victims of sex abuse by priests. Not all these charges have been substantiated as true, but Catholic leaders in the United States have tried responding to the overall problem.
In the early 1990s, for example, an ad hoc committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops surveyed the nation's dioceses for their policies on sex abuse. About three-quarters of the dioceses had policies covering sex abuse of minors. Such policies generally urge cooperation with civil and criminal proceedings though allowing the Church to defend itself, compassion for the victim, and ensuring that priests who have offended against children never return to a ministry that includes minors.
In recent months, however, the scandal has focused on whether archdioceses have properly handled allegations of sex abuse and whether their policies have been adequate. In one particular example, Cardinal Bernard Law of the Archdiocese of Boston has admitted mishandling the situation and overemphasizing secrecy over helping victims.
"Looking back, I see that we were too focused on the individual components of each case, when we should have been more focused on the protection of children," Cardinal Law wrote in an April 12, 2002 letter to other priests. "This would have changed our emphasis on secrecy as a part of legal settlements. While this focus was inspired by a desire to protect the privacy of the victim, to avoid scandal to faithful, and to preserve the reputation of the priest, we now realize both within the Church and in society at large that secrecy often inhibits healing and places others at risk."
Cardinal Law also noted in his April 12 letter that the case of one priest in particular "has brought home with painful clarity how inadequate our record keeping has been. A continual institutional memory concerning allegations and cases of abuse of children was lacking."
The Vatican reportedly wanted to treat the issue as a local one, which could be dealt with by American bishops. The Pope referred to the growing scandal only vaguely in his traditional Holy Thursday letter of March 17, in which he expressed the disappointment that the new millennium had not coincided with a new era of peace and that even priests had succumbed to the mystery of evil in the world.
"At this time too, as priests we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of Ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis at work in the world. Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice," the Pope wrote.
"We know that the human heart has always been attracted to evil, and that man will be able to radiate peace and love to those around him only if he meets Christ and allows himself to be ‘overtaken' by him. As ministers of the Eucharist and of sacramental Reconciliation, we in particular have the task of communicating hope, goodness and peace to the world."
A month later, the Vatican reversed direction and called for talks that occurred on April 23-24 between the Cardinals of the United States, the leadership of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, and Vatican leaders. At these meetings, participants promised to devise the new procedures described above and re-affirmed that sexual abuse of minors was an "appalling sin in the eyes of God, above all when it is perpetrated by priests and religious whose vocation is to help people lead holy lives." They also upheld the value of priestly celibacy, explaining that there was no proven link between celibacy and pedophilia.
In welcoming the participants to the Vatican on April 23, the Pope gave a programmatic address at which he said that he expressed his "profound sense of solidarity and concern" to the victims and thanked the participants for establishing "more reliable criteria" and more knowledge to prevent future incidents. While acknowledging the "power of Christian conversion" to change a person's soul, he told participants that "people need to know that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young."
Sources: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is on-line here and has collected documents such as those from the April 23-24 conference here. The Child Maltreatment 1999 report is on-line here, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement, by Howard N. Snyder (July 2000) is available on-line here. Cardinal Bernard Law's April 12, 2002 letter is on-line here.
Fundamentlist Christianity (last updated December 29, 2001) (back to top)
Fundamentalist Christianity, rooted in conservative and evangelical Protestantism, has risen and fallen time and again in influence over the 20th century, most recently as the New Christian Right, but it continues to show a divide between itself and the overall nation in attitudes. Many of the debates of the late 20th century can be seen through the prism of this divide.
Fundamentalism is based in a core set of beliefs that are not shared entirely with other branches of Christianity. For example:
- Individual salvation, or evangelism to convert people in order to save their souls.
- Complete accuracy of the Bible, and the belief that the only sure path to salvation is through faith in the complete accuracy of the Bible and in Jesus Christ. Fundamentalists thus turn to the Bible -- as it has been interpreted -- for answers and see ideas such as evolution and tolerance for homosexuality as threats to their entire belief system. For more on evolution, go here, and for more on the Old Testament's alleged hostility towards homosexuality, go here.
- Bible as Prophecy. Most Fundamentalists believe in the Rapture, the time when "the Son of Man comes" and those who have been saved will be taken to Heaven and non-believers left behind; fundamentalists believe that the Rapture will be followed by a Tribulation in which those left behind must fight a battle between good and evil before Christ establishes his kingdom on Earth. They believe that the Bible contains prophecies showing signs in advance of the Rapture; one sign is the re-establishment of the State of Israel, which is why some fundamentalists support Israel in order to advance the Rapture.
Fundamentalism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century as Protestant leaders in the United States sought ways to defend traditional beliefs from "modern" scholarship that questioned the complete accuracy of the Bible and social developments. Fundamentalism was initially organized through Bible and prophecy conferences, revival movements, and publications such as the series of short essays issued from 1910 to 1915 entitled "The Fundamentals," for which the entire movement is named.
In part a reaction to the horrors of World War I, fundamentalism emerged as a social movement in 1915. But by the 1920s, it was wrapped up in the debate over evolution, which culminated with the Scopes trial of 1925. This trial - a media event resulting in Scopes' conviction, which was later overturned on a technicality - showed the divide between fundamentalists and mainstream American society.
Fundamentalists thus came to see mainstream American society as under the sway of an ideology they eventually termed "secular humanism" and then began to withdraw to their own institutions, such as Bible colleges, new denominations, and the a media network that later encompassed radio and television. They quietly built up strength and influence this way; for example, despite the Scopes trial, fundamentalists quietly won a key battle in the evolution debate as the textbook market catered to them and downplayed evolution for years.
Fundamentalism began to re-emerge on the political scene in the 1970s and 1980s, reacting primarily to the social developments of the 1960s (such as Vietnam and the proposed Equal Rights Amendment) and legal decisions that pushed religion clearly away from the public sphere, such as the acceptance of abortion rights (such as Roe v. Wade) and the banning of prayer in school (such as Wallace v. Jaffree in 1985). One legal decision in particular, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 US 488 (1961), was seen as a threat as a footnote therein lumped "Secular Humanism" in with "religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God," thus lending greater legitimacy to that which most threatened fundamentalists.
The election of Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, in 1976 seemed to show that evangelical Christianity had arrived, but Carter quickly disappointed fundamentalists. He did not subscribe in the complete accuracy of the Bible, was basically pro-choice and had other liberal stances on social issues, and did not favor returning prayer to public schools. Evangelical Protestants then moved to the Republican Party and threw their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, thus building up political strength.
The 1980s saw some troubles such as sexual and financial scandals involving televangelists such as Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts, the failed presidential campaign of prominent televangelist Pat Robertson, and the symbolism of the disbanding of Robertson's group, the Moral Majority. But fundamentalists continued to mobilize. In 1992, Pat Buchanan won enough support to give a speech at the Republican National Convention, in which he said that "there is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself." Pat Robertson formed a new political organization, the Christian Coalition, which focused on local elections and helped elect a Republican majority in Congress in 1994.
Sources: Nancy T. Ammerman, "North American Protestant Fundamentalism," in Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (University of Chicago Press, 1991). Garry Wills, Under God: religion and American politics (Simon & Schuster, 1990). William Martin, With God on Our Side: the rise of the Religious Right in America (Broadway Books, 1996). Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: the Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion (Harvard University Press, 1998). Dallas A. Blanchard, The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Rise of the Religious Right: from polite to fiery protest (Twayne Publishers, 1994). Bryan F. Le Beau, The Political Mobilization of the New Christian Right, available on-line here. Pat Robertson's August 17, 1992 speech at the Republican National Convention is available on-line here.
Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac (last updated August 5, 2002) (back to top)
Whatever their differences today, Jews, Arabs, and Christians all look back to one man, Abraham, and to his sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham was the first to accept a monolithic conception of God and endured long years waiting for his God to fulfill his promise for sons that would dominate the land. His wife Sarah sent him to father a child by her Egyptian maid, Hagar; this son was Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arab people. Thirteen years later, at the age of 100, Abraham finally fathered a child by his wife; this son was Isaac, whose son Jacob would become the father of the Jewish people.
These half-brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, had little if any contact with each other as children or young adults, their separation a result of rivalry between their mothers. Nevertheless, after years of apparent separation, they re-united to bury their father Abraham in the cave of Machpelah, what is now known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
These facts are basically agreed upon by the Bible and the Koran. However, one major point of contention lies in which son Abraham came close to sacrificing. The Bible clearly states that Abraham was ordered to sacrifice Isaac at a time long after Ishamel and his mother had been driven away. The Koran does not specifically name Ishamel as the son to be sacrificed but holds that the testing occurred before the birth of Isaac, which necessarily implies Ishmael. The distinction matters in terms of whether Isaac alone received the Lord's blessing after the test or whether he shared it with his half-brother Ishmael.
The Bible's version clearly states that the Lord ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering on a mountaintop, the final command after long decades in which Abraham followed the Lord's commands to travel in hopes of the Lord fulfilling His promises that Abraham's progeny would inherit the land. Abraham then took Isaac to the mountain, bound him, and took up the cleaver to sacrifice his son.
At that point, God's messenger stopped Abraham and told him to offer a ram instead. The messenger then told Abraham that God now declared that because Abraham had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, "I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shores of the sea, and your seed shall take hold of its enemies' gate. And all the nations of the earth will be blessed through your seed because you have listened to my voice." Unlike the prior statements by the Lord, this fifth version of God's promise to Abraham would not be considered a contract under modern American jurisprudence but a gift to be rendered in lieu of Abraham's already completed act.
The Bible's version of the story clearly occurs years after Ishamel and his mother Hagar had already been driven away by Abraham's wife Sarah. The story reflects the Lord's recognition of Isaac as Abraham's only son (arguably because Isaac was Abraham's only legitimate child at the time), but it also arguably demonstrates Abraham's continued affection for Ishamel in the way that the Lord redundantly orders Abraham to sacrifice "your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac." Some have translated this litany as reflecting Abraham's protests that he had more than one son whom he loved, forcing the Lord to respond with more specificity each time.
On the other hand, according to the Koran's version of the story, the testing of Abraham occurs before Isaac was born and thus involves Abraham's only son at the time, who, legitimate or not, could only be Ishmael. In this version, two men receive God's blessing after Abraham passes the test; one is definitely Isaac, but the other is presumably Ishmael. The half-brothers share the Lord's blessing in this version, which reads as follows in the Koran's suras 37:100 to 37:113:
| | (And he prayed:) 'O Lord, grant me a righteous son.' So We gave him the good news of a clement son. When he was old enough to go about with him, he said: 'O my son, I dreamt that I was sacrificing you. Consider, what you think?' He replied: 'Father, do as you are commanded. If God pleases you will find me firm.'
When they submitted to the will of God, and (Abraham) laid (his son) down prostrate on his temple, We called out: 'O Abraham, You have fulfilled your dream.' Thus do We reward the good. - That was indeed a trying test. So We ransomed him for a great sacrifice, And left (his hallowed memory) for posterity.
Peace be on Abraham. That is how We reward those who do good. He is truly among Our faithful creatures. So We gave him the good news of Isaac, apostle, who is among the righteous. And We blessed him and Isaac. Among their descendants are some who do good, but some who wrong themselves.(emphasis added) |
Family History according to Genesis
In any case, the rest of the history of the family of Abraham is less subject to disagreement, at the very least because the Koran does not go into it. As told in the Book of Genesis, Abraham's story begins when he was 75 years old and still called Abram. The Lord told Abram to leave his homeland and that, in turn, the Lord would "make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing." Abram thus took his wife Sarai, as well as their goods and slaves, and sojourned for most of his remaining years, enduring many tests of his commitment to and faith in his Lord. Abram's nephew Lot traveled with them for a time but then settled in Sodom.
The Lord made two more sets of promises to Abram over the following decade. First, the Lord told Abram to walk the land he was given and that Abram's progeny would be as many as the dust of the earth. Years later, the Lord gave a more detailed account of Abram's progeny's future and the land that was given.
| | "Know well that your seed shall be strangers in a land not theirs and they shall be enslaved and afflicted four hundred years. But upon the nation for whom they slave I will bring judgment, and afterward they shall come forth with great substance … To your seed I have given this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenite and the Kenizite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite." |
Childless, frustrated, Sarai finally sent her Egyptian maid, Hagar, to her husband, and Hagar conceived a child. Abram then allowed Sarai to harass Hagar, and Hagar fled into the wild. God's messenger, an angel, then found Hagar by a spring of water, the well called Beer-lahai-roi, between Kadesh and Bered, and told her that to return to Sarai and endure her harassment. "Look, you have conceived and will bear a son and you will call him Ishmael, for the Lord has heeded your suffering. And he will be a wild ass of a man - his hand against all, the hand of all against him, he will encamp in despite all of his kin." Hagar returned to Abram and Sarai, and gave birth to Ishamel; Abram was 86 years old at the time.
Thirteen years later, the Lord returned to Abram and restated His covenant with Abram for the fourth time. First, Abram would be the father to a multitude of nations, and "kings shall come forth from you." Second, Abram would henceforth be known as Abraham and Sarai would be Sarah, signifying the change in their roles. Third, the Lord would give unto Abraham and his progeny "the land in which you sojourn, the whole land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding." In return, Abraham and every male progeny afterwards must be circumcised as a sign of the covenant.
Abraham, skeptical and bitter, laughed, saying "To a hundred-year-old will a child be born, will ninety-year-old Sarah give birth? Would that Ishmael might live in Your favor!" The Lord replied, "Yet Sarah your wife is to bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant, for his seed after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Look, I will bless him and make him fruitful and will multiply him most abundantly, twelve chieftains he shall beget, and I will make him a great nation." Respecting the new covenant, Abraham, Ishmael, and his slaves were circumcised.
Over the next year, Abraham went on several journeys. He went with the Lord in human form to Sodom and Gomorrah, and he settled in Gerar, again using the ruse that Sarah was in fact his sister and not his wife, a trick designed to prevent any from killing Abraham in hopes of marrying Sarah. Finally, with Abraham 100 years old and Sarah 90, Sarah gave birth to Isaac.
Rivalry between the two mothers quickly played a part. Sarah told Abraham to drive out Hagar and Ishmael, "for the slavegirl's son shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac." Abraham was reluctant to do so, "for the thing seemed evil in Abraham's eyes," but God told him that all would work well for Hagar and Ishmael. "Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice, for through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed. But the slavegirl's son, too, I will make a nation, for he is your seed."
Hagar then fled and, on the verge of death from thirst, she set Ishmael out of her sight and began crying, waiting for her son to die. The Lord's messenger then came for a second time to Hagar and told her to "rise, lift up the lad and hold him by the hand, for a great nation will I make him." Hagar then looked up and saw a well of water, and gave some to her son to drink. "And God was with the lad, and he grew up and dwelled in the wilderness, and he became a seasoned bowman. And he dwelled in the wilderness of Paran and his mother took him a wife from the land of Egypt."
Years went by, and then, according to Genesis, came the Lord's final testing of Abraham. As noted above, the Koran placed the testing earlier, before Isaac was born.
In any case, Abraham and his sons all followed their own paths over the next few decades. Ishmael lived 137 years and had 12 sons who became the founders of the Ishmaelite tribes, the Arabs. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob; his wife Rebekah was told while pregnant that "Two nations - in your womb, two peoples from your loins shall issue. People over people shall prevail, the elder, the younger's slave." Jacob later bought Esau's birthright, and later received his father's blessing under the guise of being Esau. Jacob would be the father of the Jews, and Esau the father of the Edomites, Israel's neighbors.
Abraham himself took a second wife, Keturah, and through her he fathered the seminomadic peoples of the trans-Jordan region and the Arabian peninsula. She bore him six children, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Abraham died at the age of 175 years.
Driven apart by the rivalry between their mothers, Isaac and Ishmael, who barely knew each other even as half-brothers, reunited and possibly met for what appears to be the first and only time when they buried their father in the Machpelah caves. Genesis does not record them ever meeting again.
Sources: Quotes from Genesis are from Robert Alter's translation (W.W. Norton & Co., 1996). Passages from the Koran are from Ahmed Ali's translation (Princeton University Press, 1993). The Christian Witness to the Koran includes an essay comparing the Bible's and Koran's recountings of the story of Abraham's final testing and is on-line here.
The Old Testament (Leviticus, Genesis) and Homosexuality (last updated December 29, 2001) (back to top)
The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament (same texts but with a different order of chapters) addresses homosexuality in only two places: the Book of Leviticus and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, and only indirectly in the latter.
Leviticus 18:22 is explicit in its language. "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is a abomination." Leviticus 20:13 goes even further with an exact, harsh punishment. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."
The Book of Leviticus is a detailed set of religious rituals dealing with offerings, menstruation, leprosy, animals' suitability for consumption as food, and enslavement due to debt. They are a set of laws and rituals for a particular society at a particular time: the book was written when Israelites were in captivity and priests were codifying rituals in order to retain their identity.
And for that time, homosexual acts may have indeed posed a threat to the fragile order the Israelites were trying to preserve.
But not all prescriptions in Leviticus are applicable or relevant to modern society. The laws of Leviticus are not necessarily a blueprint for every society but the one of the priests of the house of Levi, just as old state laws prohibiting women from wearing shiny shoes so that men could not stare at the reflections of their underwear are not necessarily applicable now in the 21st century. The laws may have been right back then, and not right now.
For example, as the character of President Jed Bartlett noted in the West Wing episode "The Midterms," laws must be seen in the context of the society that created them, and are not necessarily transferable or applicable to any other:
- "You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff," 19:19.
- "Whoever does any work on this same day [the tenth day of the seventh month, a day of atonement], that person I will destroy from among his people," 23:30.
- "[T]he swine, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew the cud, is unclean to you. Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch; they are unclean to you," 11:7-8. "[W]hoever carries any part of their carcass shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the evening." 11:25.
Bartlett could also have mentioned tattoos, which are banned in Chapter 19, verse 28.
In addition, Leviticus Chapter 27 deals with the valuation of persons when offered to the Lord: men aged 20-60 are worth 50 shekels of silver, females 20-60 are worth 30, males 5-20 are worth 20, and females worth 10. Infant males are worth five shekels, females three.
As for Sodom and Gomorrah, that story has been interpreted as a condemnation of homosexuality because a crowd of men threatened to rape God, who had taken the form of a mortal man. But this is not the only interpretation of why this act was wrong, and perhaps not even the most logical (after all, Lot's response is simply to offer his daughter as a victim instead, which raises questions about his responsibility as a father and also begs the question why such an offer would mean anything to a crowd of homosexual rapists).
Jack Miles, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book God: A Biography, instead argues that the crux of the story is not that the wicked men of Sodom and Gomorrah were trying to have sex with a man but that they were threatening to rape God himself. This challenge to God's body and his power is what ultimately dooms them.
Alabama and the Ten Commandments (last updated October 2001) (back to top)
Based on the First Amendment's prohibition of state establishment of religion (full text here) n 1980, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a Kentucky law that required the posting of a law requiring the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms, Stone v. Graham (1980). The copies were to be purchased with private money and would have a notation in small-print stating that "the secular application of the Ten Commandments is clearly seen in its adoption as the fundamental legal code of Western Civilization and the Common Law of the United States." The majority of the Court viewed the purpose of the law as "plainly religious," since "the first part of the Commandments concerns the religious duties of believers."
Nonetheless, government officials in several states have tried to post the Ten Commandments in public space several times since then. These efforts have met with legal action and been declared unconstitutional.
Perhaps most famously, in the mid-1990s, an Alabama county judge, Roy S. Moore, sparked national attention when he displayed a carving of the Ten Commandments on the wall behind his bench. The display was declared unconstitutional in February 1997 by Montgomery County Circuit Judge Charles Price, who wrote that "the Ten Commandments are not in peril. They are neither stained, tarnished nor thrashed. They may be displayed in every church, synagogue, temple, mosque, home and storefront... Where this precious gift cannot and should not be displayed as an obvious religious text or to promote religion is on government property (particularly in a courtroom)."
Moore used the publicity surrounding the Ten Commandments case to win an election as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In August 2001, he placed a monument including the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the Judiciary's building. The monument also included quotations from Presidents Jefferson, Washington and Madison, as a way of complying with court statements that indicate that the Ten Commandments can be displayed if part of a larger presentation involving legal historical documents.
The Ten Commandments, otherwise known as the Decalogue, are drawn from God's speech to Moses on Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus. As generally defined, the first four commandments deal with the beliefs and practices of Christians and Jews. The last six are moral and ethical rules dealing with general behavior and are thus applicable to non-believers.
- Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
- Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.
- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
- Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant.
- Honour thy father and thy mother.
- Thou shalt not kill.
- Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- Thou shalt not steal.
- Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
- Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant.
Sources: ACLU victorious in Ten Commandments case, ACLU 2/10/97 press release, available on-line here. Developments in Alabama are tracked by the Mobile Area Freethought Association, available on-line here. Information on the Ten Commandments is available here.
Gay Jesus (last updated July 2001) (back to top)
Protests surrounded the 1998 production of Corpus Christi, a play that depicted the life of Jesus as a gay man who had sex with his disciples. The play was by written by Terrence McNally, a playwright who has won the prestigious Tony award for the musical Ragtime and was nominated recently for the musical The Full Monty; McNally said the play was inspired by the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming student Mathew Shepard.
Due to the protests and threats of violence, the Manhattan Theater Club dropped the play from its fall schedule but then reversed its decision a few days later. Surrounded by protests, the play had its premiere in October 1998. Controversy followed the play, and when it premiered in 1999, a relatively obscure and extreme Islamic group reportedly issued a fatwa against McNally.
Ironically, McNally's play is not the first dramatic portrayal of a gay Jesus to elicit such protests; it is just the first one to actually exist.
In the 1980s, millions of people wrote letters to the Attorney Generals of Illinois and Alabama protesting an allegedly upcoming movie that portrayed Jesus as gay (what a state's legal office could do without violating the First Amendment was apparently not made quite clear). The movie did not actually exist, though a suburban Chicago publication apparently had reported in 1977 that such a movie was being planned. The news spread from there through chain letters and took on such a life of its own that the Attorney General of Illinois asked Ann Landers in 1985 to help debunk the story and stop the thousands of chain letters his office received each month. Landers did print the Attorney General's letter and urged her readers to throw out any letters they got on the topic.
Sources: Urban Legends Reference Page (Gay Jesus Film), available on-line here.
|
|
|
Index / Home
FootnoteTV
Footnote Fahrenheit
Footnote Media
Issues
Cases
Resources
Footnote Comics
Site FAQ
Search via Google
Election 2004
Issues
|
|