The Pope and the Anglicans

On Oct. 20, Pope Benedict XVI announced through the Archbishop of Westminster (in London) that former Anglicans may enter into "full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual patrimony." Or, as the Anglican leader Rowan Williams put it, "they can retain aspects of Anglican liturgical and spiritual tradition."

 Although details will not be released for several months, the goal is to ease the conversion of Anglican priests and congregations from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Since Catholicism already has procedures by which married (and non-married) clergy may become priests of the Roman church, attention was immediately drawn to its effect on congregations. The question swirled through the media, would this decree drain Anglicanism of its core of believers? An editorial in the New York Times even suggested that it could change the religious character of English society.

True, many Anglicans' first reaction was that the Catholics were "poaching" on the Anglican Christians at the time of their difficulties involving the ordination of women and practicing homosexuals. Second thoughts were significantly less worried. Even the largest breakaway movement, the Anglican Church in North America, dismissed its impact, "we believe that this provision will not be utilized by the great majority of [members of] the Anglican Church in North America. . . ."

One reason for the ho-hum response is that Anglicanism is a big-tent organization. With 77 million members, the international Anglican Communion is the largest Protestant denomination in the world. It has long balanced conflicting views and beliefs. As UW religion professor Kris Utterback observed in the Casper Star-Tribune, "The Episcopal Church tries to stay in and slug it out."

Anglicanism's founding decades set up this broadly inclusive character. When King Henry cut the English church off from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, his aim was not reform. That happened after his death. For several decades, the national church swung between Catholicism and Protestantism, with persecution and execution on both sides.

Finally, under Queen Elizabeth, a broad compromise was reached. The Anglican church brought together a simplified Catholic liturgy with elements of Calvinist theology. This compromise was embodied in the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles of Religion.

This compromise has always been uneasy. In the early centuries, it led to criticisms from the Calvinist wing: Puritans who tried from within to purify the Church of its remaining Catholic elements; Separatists who left the Church because they judged it would never change. (The group that came to America as "Puritans" were actually Separatists, just to be confusing.) 

Anglicanism has spawned many new churches from this wing of the Church: Congregationalism (Church of Christ), most early types of Baptists, and Methodism. Although not all these movements emphasized Calvinism, all moved away from the Catholic elements of Anglicanism. Those who remained within Anglicanism are now often termed Orthodox Anglicans.

The other wing of Anglicanism has not been quiet. Known as the Anglo-Catholics, this branch of the Church emphasizes continuation of Catholic elements. In the 1830s and 1840s, the Oxford Movement, led by John Henry Newman, increasingly emphasized the Catholic character. Although Newman himself ultimately converted to Catholicism, the Oxford movement had a strong impact on Anglicanism. Anglican worship increased its emphasis on the Eucharist, expanded the priestly use of vestments and organized religious orders (i.e., "monks" and "nuns").

Within modern Anglicanism, both Orthodox Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics are unhappy about the ordination of women and gay priests and bishops. But their reasons differ significantly. One side sees it as against Biblical and Calvinist theology, while the other side sees it as against Catholic teachings.

Most of the congregations that have broken away from the Anglican Church are Orthodox Anglican; that is why the ACNA is so sure that few of their members will take advantage of the Pope's offer. Most of these have joined dioceses in Africa (e.g., Uganda, Rwanda) where modern innovations such as female priests have not happened.

A few Anglo-Catholic congregations have broken away; most have joined the Traditional Anglican Communion, based in 16 countries. In fact, the Pope's announcement is a response to a request by this organization for help in easing their transition away from the Anglican Church and into Catholicism. 

Interestingly, the controversy over female and gay ordination may be the first time in Anglican history that differences do not lead to new forms of Protestantism but instead result in congregations moving to other forms of Christianity.

Islam on the World Scale

The big headline on the CNN website one day last week read: One quarter of the World is Muslim! Although the headline was designed to shock readers and get them to read the story, the story itself sounded more like the first day of a freshman-level “Introduction to Islam” course than a shocking revelation of unknown data.

The occasion was the recent release of the Pew Foundation’s study of the world’s Muslim population (pewforum.org) which has provided the most accurate (but by no means perfect) population estimates of the Islamic world. While the Pew study has refined the numbers and made them more reliable, the picture of world Islam remains that familiar to scholars and college students—although, given the press’s reaction, perhaps not to most journalists or readers. Let me discuss a few highlights.

The earth contains 1.57 billion Muslims, about 23% of its 6.8 billion people. It remains the second largest religion behind Christianity, whose population is presently estimated to be 2.22 billion, about 32%.

The most interesting part of the study is that it so clearly explodes the false link between Islam and Arabs. Islam originated among the Arabs and in its early centuries the two became inseparably linked in the minds of westerners. Even as Islam expanded beyond the Arab world, the misconception held.

The Pew study shows that 62% of the world’s Muslims live in Asia. They are not ethnically Arab. The Arab countries, which the Pew identifies as “Middle East-North Africa,” make up only 20% of the world Muslims, even though the populations of nearly all these countries are 75% or more Muslim, and more than half of them are 95% Muslim. The desert climate of the Middle Eastern countries cannot sustain large populations like the Asian countries.

The two countries with the largest Muslim populations are Indonesia and Pakistan, respectively. Muslims are the majority in these countries. But the country with the third largest number is India, where Muslims make up only 13% of the population. India simply has a large population. The fourth country is Bangladesh. By itself, Indonesia contains 13% of the world’s adherents to Islam, but the three countries of South Asia (Indian subcontinent) constitute almost a third of the earth’s Muslims.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the next largest percentage of world Muslims, about 15%. Nearly a third of these live in Nigeria, which is home to 78 million.

Europe comes in fourth with just 5%, about 38 million members of Islam. What is interesting is that while press reports about Muslims in Europe feature problems with recent immigrants, such as those in England and France, most European Muslims belong to families that have been in Europe for centuries. They account for 60% of Europe’s Islamic population and live primarily in Eastern Europe.

North and South America have few Muslims, just 4.6 million. This is only slightly more than Germany, which has 4 million. The United States is the only country that contains more than a million Muslims. At 2.5 million, they constitute only 0.8% of the nation’s population. They are the third largest religious group in the USA, behind Christians and Jews. While the USA’s Muslim population has been growing over the years, it remains about half the size of Judaism. The 2008 American Religious Landscape study put Judaism’s membership at about 1.7% of the US population, something over 4 million.

Neither religious group can hold a candle to the USA’s Christian population, of course, which totals well over 160 million Americans. This is more than 80 times the size of the Islamic population.

Americans may worry about the size of Islam, certainly some small political organizations have tried to use it in their scare tactics, but there is really nothing new in the Pew report that has not been widely known in the higher education community for decades. Islam has been the world’s second largest religion for a long time. Muslim immigration into Europe may generate friction and therefore news, but it is not large enough to constitute a significant threat to Europe’s Christian roots. And certainly, neither the USA nor any other country is the Americas is under any pressure from Islam.

Science of the Apocalypse

At first glance, "science" and "apocalypse" do not seem to fit together. The term "apocalypse" comes from ancient Judaism and usually invokes religious prophecies of dire events and perhaps even the end of our world caused by divine wrath. Science, considered as calm and rational, has little to do with God or prophetic invocations of heavenly anger. But in recent decades, "science" became involved in apocalyptic predictions and even has begun to make them itself. While end-times predictions have been around a long time, indeed, they are older than Christianity, modern apocalypticism got its start in the 1830s with John Darby. He was an Anglo-Irish preacher who developed a new twist on the dispensationalist theologies of his time. Darby devised the interpretation that prior to the onslaught of the millennium, the true believers would be raptured. That is, they would be taken up to heaven to escape all the horrible events and persecutions of human society's last convulsions. His system, known as "pre-millennial dispensationalism," has been the dominant end-times theology among evangelicals since that time. And why not? The bad guys get punished and the good guys rise to heaven to avoid the punishment. Apocalyptic predictions began to draw heavily on science following World War II, usually in the form of technology. In the 1950s, these ideas even made it onto the popular music scene, with songs like "Jesus hits like an Atom Bomb" and "[Are you ready for] The Great Atomic Power." By 1970, Hal Lindsey put together the various ideas of technological pre-millennialism in his "The Late Great Planet Earth," which sold more than 10 million copies. In it, Lindsey argues that the biblical "fiery destruction" refers to the explosions of nuclear weapons and its "plagues of locusts" actually foreshadows swarms of military helicopters delivering hoards of soldiers and weapons. Technology quickly became the driving force of non-religious predictions of major cataclysms that would end life as we know it. In addition to a nuclear holocaust brought about by unbridled nuclear war, there was also the pseudo-scientific warnings about global cooling in the 1970s caused by too much burning of fossil fuels. The more agitated of these included warnings of a coming ice-age. And don't forget the Y2K forecasts. Based on the worry that old computer software was programmed with too few digits, there were predictions of planes falling from the sky, computer-controlled electricity grids shutting down, and billing software requesting large (incorrect) payments. In America, this almost became a bigger news story than the millennium itself. During this same period, the second half of the 20th century, it became increasingly fashionable among scientists and others to call attention their work and conclusions by predicting a catastrophic apocalypse if "something is not done" to fix it. Biologist Paul Ehrlich, in his 1968 book, "The Population Bomb," predicted world-wide famines if population growth was not significantly slowed. He encouraged mass sterilization as a solution. Interestingly, those who promote a religious apocalypse have either ignored these non-religious scenarios or incorporated them as additional evidence of the immanence of their own theology. But there is one scientific prediction of coming doom that has dispensationalists rising up in arms. This is the scientific prediction of global climate change caused by the build-up of human-made, greenhouse gases. Most believers in religious apocalypse have scoffed loudly at the data indicating climate change over the last few years. When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the evidence left no room for doubt that climate was occurring, these evangelicals simply shifted their argument from "no climate change" to "no human-made climate change." Why have dispensationalists so fervently denied climate change doomsday scenarios rather than incorporating them as evidence of their own theology? I'm not sure. Is it possible believers sense competition in them, competition because the scientific data actually supports the climate change conclusions? To them, this might suggest it is science rather than religion that points to a believable coming catastrophe. Or perhaps all end-times scenarios are over-hyped ways of attracting attention to issues that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Lord, Lord

In my last column, I discussed how English Bible translations use the word "servant" when translating the Hebrew and Greek words for "slave." The slavery terminology is used not only in situations with actual slaves, but also metaphorically with one's social superiors, such as a king or even God.

Thus when the King James translation has "Moses, the servant of God," the original Hebrew actually reads, "Moses, the slave of God." The same happens when translating the New Testament; Peter refers to himself as the "slave" of God. Using "servant" in these passages moderates the jarring character of this reference for modern ears, suggesting someone more like an English butler or gardener.

If Scripture is full of references to slaves, then it is not surprising that it contains references to masters as well. Indeed, the term "master" often appears in tandem with slavery terminology. The owner of a slave is an Adon in Hebrew and a Kurios in Greek.

Both Adon and Kurios are used to identify those who own slaves and as words of submission before individuals who are socially superior. When Exodus 21 speaks of people selling themselves into slavery, it refers to the purchaser as the Adon. When Moses humbles himself before God at the burning bush, he acknowledges God's infinite superiority by calling him, "my Adon." Similarly, when King David is addressed by his subordinates, they refer to him as "my Adon," or in the early Greek translation called the Septuagint as, "my Kurios." When the Gospel of Matthew in 7:21 says, "No man can serve two masters," referring to God and money, the term for master is Kurios.

In English translations, Adon and Kurios are usually translated as either "master" or "lord." When the latter refers to God, it is capitalized. "Master" is usually used when talking about actual slaves, and "lord" is the translation in situations where the term is used metaphorically to indicate social inferiority. Furthermore, when a person uses it in relationship to God, it often indicates not only inferiority, but also devotion and commitment.

Sometimes it is not clear whether actual or metaphorical slavery is meant. A story in the apocryphal book, the Acts of Thomas, illustrates this. After Jesus ascended into heaven, so the story goes, the 12 disciples were deciding which territories each should evangelize. They prayed to God and God told each of them where to go. Jesus through prayer instructed Thomas, who initially doubted Jesus' resurrection, to go to India. Frightened of the challenge and afraid to travel so far, he refused. Despite clear instructions in prayer, he continued to refuse.

So Jesus appears in physical form in Jerusalem to an Indian merchant who was in Israel to purchase a carpenter. Jesus pointed to Thomas, who was standing across the square, and said, "That man is my slave. He is a carpenter and I will sell him to you." After the transaction was completed, Jesus took the Indian over to Thomas. The Indian asked Thomas, "Is this your Kurios?" He meant, "is this your owner?" Thomas answered, "This is my Kurios." Thomas used the term metaphorically, of course, to indicate his devotion to the Lord Jesus. Nevertheless, the Indian took possession of Thomas as a slave and brought him to India.

This story's ability to play on the confusion between the two uses of the term indicates the extent to which slavery terminology was used and recognized in the early church and in ancient Judaism. The model of the devoted Christian, in this fictional tale, is one who is a slave to the master Christ. Much of this brash character has been lost through the substitution of "servant" for "slave" in the translations.

Another reason for the moderation of slavery terminology in Scripture is the change in the meaning of "Lord." In ancient Judaism, God's name was not supposed to be uttered. To ensure this did not happen, the Greek translation always translated God's name as "Kurios," a habit that English translations continued by rendering the name as "Lord." Since "Lord" has come to function as God's name, appearing in nearly every chapter of the Bible, the word's association with slavery has been largely forgotten.

God's Slaves

"Religion Today" is contributed by the University of Wyoming's Religious Studies Program to examine and to promote discussion of religious issues.

By Paul V.M. Flesher

Since the publication of the King James version in 1611, or earlier, readers of English Bibles have read about God's "servants." Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David are all called God's "servants" in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Paul, John, Peter and Phoebe are designated as "servants" of God. Sometimes they even call themselves that.

The problem is that the words translated as "servant" do not mean that, they mean "slave." Neither ancient Jewish society nor the ancient Greek and Roman cultures within which Christianity took shape had a social class of people similar to our modern idea of servants as household employees, such as butlers, maids, cooks or even hired hands.

The Hebrew word "eved" used in the Old Testament and the Greek word "doulos" used in the New Testament indicates a human being who is owned by another individual; a person who is property. It does not refer to someone employed and paid wages to work in a household. In fact, long_term employment as a concept did not exist in the ancient Mediterranean world. Household workers were either slaves or freed slaves, who were still beholden to their former masters. People could be paid for short_term labor, often on a daily basis, but that was not a permanent job.

The difference between slave and servant of course sounds quite jarring to our modern sensibilities. Consider the opening line of the New Testament book of James: "James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, greetings to the 12 tribe in the diaspora." Or, in the Old Testament, God transfers the leadership of the Israelites to Joshua after Moses' death by saying, "Moses my slave is dead. Therefore rise, Joshua, and you and this people shall cross this Jordan" (Joshua 1:1). Or God speaks of King David as "my slave David" (e.g., 1 Kings 11:13).

Ancient slavery was quite complex, with many levels of status, trust, and loyalty. Some slaves worked in the fields or tended the sheep -- and were often treated little better than the animals they supervised. Other slaves were faithful household assistants who interacted with their masters every day. A few slaves rose to positions of power within their master's household. For instance, Abraham sent his most trusted slave, an overseer, many hundreds of miles to choose a wife for his son Isaac (Genesis 24).

Slavery could also be a temporary status, as described in Exodus 21. If a person became poor, they might sell themselves or their family members into slavery for a few years. During that time, they would serve their owner as he (or she) desired, but the master would feed and clothe them. Exodus recognized that young girls were often sold in this manner and considered this a path to wifehood.

Slavery also provided metaphors for social relationships. In the ancient world, people were not considered free citizens of a nation, but as subjects to the ruler. To be a "subject" is to be under a king's power and authority with little legal protection from personal injury, theft or even death at the king's order. When speaking to a king in public, therefore, a person referred to himself or herself as the king's slave. Even King David's wife, Bathsheba, refers to herself as a "slave woman" when speaking to David (1 Kings 1:13).

As we saw above, this figurative language of slavery is used when relating a faithful follower to God. This is true whether the one praying is a commoner, a prophet or a king themself. When Solomon prays to God at the dedication of the newly completed Jerusalem Temple (2 Chronicles 6), he calls himself a slave before God, his father King David a slave before God, and even refers to all the Israelites as slaves to God.

Our modern society is so far removed from slavery that to translate these terms in their actual meaning of "slave" is too jarring and carries no meaning except that of extreme social degradation. So English translators of the Bible have for centuries altered the slavery language to that of "servant" so that people who read Scripture today can perceive the social relationships in familiar terms rather than ones that are now incomprehensible.

It's OK to Pray in Your School

Well the school hear is beginning again, and so it is a good moment to revisit that continually confused and confusing issue, prayer in schools. There is a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding of what kind of prayer is permitted in the public schools of the United States of America. So let me take this column to review what is and what is not allowed with regard to prayer in public schools.

What kind of prayer is allowed in a public school?

Everyone and anyone who goes to a school may pray there. "Everyone," that means students, teachers, staff and administrators, may offer a private prayer to the divine at anytime they choose. "Anyone," that means any person of any religious faith, be they Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, or Mormon, or Native American, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, or Wiccan. Thus praying in the schools is permitted to everyone there, as long as it is private and personal, and does not interrupt legitimate school activities.

It is also O.K. for students of like beliefs to join together to pray, whether informally ("let's meet at the west door before the bell") or more formally in a religious club of voluntary membership. This club may meet on school property, such as in a classroom, at times when clubs are usually allowed to meet. The only exception to this is if the school has banned clubs altogether. The rule of thumb is that religious clubs must be treated the same as other clubs.

Similarly, it is permitted for teachers, staff, and even administrators to join together voluntarily to pray. Again, this may occur in formal or informal settings.

What kind of prayer is not allowed in a public school?

It is not O.K. to pray in a school in way that would knowingly or unknowingly coerce anyone of a different belief to join in. Thus teachers, principals and others in a position of authority should not use that position to persuade, require, expect, or intimidate students or others under their supervision to take part in prayer that they otherwise would not. Schools are inherently hierarchical and those who are higher in the hierarchy should do nothing that would seem to exercise that position to make those below them pray.

Similarly, prayer should not be part of public school functions. Although this rule can be a bit vague, the main principle is clear. A general prayer offered in a manner designed to be inclusive of all present, whatever religion they adhere to and articulating generally positive sentiments agreeable to them, is sometimes acceptable, if not done too frequently. Graduation ceremonies can usually include this kind of prayer. Prayers that adhere to a single doctrinal line or reflect a non-inclusive theology do not belong at school functions, even if said by a student. In general, prayer should not be conducted in such a way to exclude or stigmatize those who do not participate in or follow a particular religion.

Finally, participation in prayer should not be used as a basis to reward or promote those who take part or to withhold such rewards from people who do not.

These rules, both positive and negative, are designed to ensure every individual's freedom to believe and worship as they choose, and to prevent the power of the state (as exercised by the school and its employees) from interfering with that right. Those who do not follow such rules may be exercising what they see as their own religious freedom, but they will be doing it at the expense of the religious freedom of others.

The Episcopal Church Chooses its Future

Well, it just goes to show that churches do not think like businesses. As of early June, six of the 50 states permit gay people to marry. You would think that given this sudden availability of people who can potentially wed that churches would be falling over themselves in competition to provide that service. They are not. Instead, there is a deafening silence. While I am sure that a few, perhaps smaller, denominations are celebrating marriages, most churches are not. Certainly not the larger, more prominent denominations.

A standard church wedding between a man and a woman brings them together before their friends and family who are present to witness their expressions of love and commitment to each other and to celebrate the joy of their union. The vows they speak to each other are said before God, which makes them in a sense the strongest kind of oath that can be uttered.

By the mid-20th century, the government had long taken over the "marriage business." A couple may get married in a church before God and the community, but until the marriage license fee is paid and the form signed, they are not legally married. The transformation of marriage into a bureaucratic act has the benefit of allowing greater flexibility in how a couple can get married, but it removes all but the essential core act of saying vows from a marriage ceremony. A "wedding" can take place without the church, without God, and without any witnesses apart from a judge like getting a drivers license. On the lighter side, it permits drive-through, Vegas weddings. But neither of these preserve the sanctity of marriage.

Since American society is largely secular, this is fine. Those who wish a wedding in a church (or a synagogue or a mosque or a temple) can easily obtain one, those who do not want a religious wedding can have their wishes as well. There is no social stigma attached one way or another. Both approaches to marriage are practiced by large numbers of couples.

It is in this context that July's decision by the General Conference of the Episcopal Church's of the United States to permit the blessings of gay marriages by Episcopal priests should be seen. For years, the Episcopalian Church had been out in the forefront on this issue. They had practiced the blessing of gay unions for more than a decade, long before it was legal for gay people to wed.

This practice, along with the ordination of gay ministers and the election of a gay bishop, threatened to split the worldwide Anglican Communion to which the Episcopalian Church belonged. So three years ago it voluntarily agreed to a moratorium on the blessings to provide a cooling-off period to enable the international church to resolve the matter in a way that would not divide Anglicans from each other. Despite much soul-searching, prayer, and meetings of bishops from around the world, the only practical result was the continuation of the moratorium disallowing the blessing of gay unions.

In the meantime, the Episcopalian Church lost its national leadership role on this issue. During those three years, five states decided to allow gay people to marry. With Massachusetts, this brought the total to six states. The Episcopalians saw that the rights which they had championed for gays were now available in these states, but the Church was not there to provide the rites. When the gay struggle was won in these states, the Episcopalian Church was not there at the end; the moratorium put it on the sidelines.

July's decisions to reinstate blessings of gay unions places The Episcopalian Church where it thinks it belongs, on the side of those who believe gay people stand equal before God. It is a matter of justice, but it is also matter of ministry. Gay believers who wish to unite should not be forced into a church-less marriage run by government bureaucrats. The Episcopalian Church wants to welcome them into the church's fold.