Faith in Context

Seventh-day Adventist Church Refuses Ordination to Women

By Loren Seibold

The latest conservative denomination to deny women ordination is the Seventh-day Adventist church, a denomination whose single most significant shaping force was its 19th-century prophetess and co-founder, Ellen Gould Harmon White. 

White's role in the church might have suggested that women's spiritual leadership would be welcome. But that assumption wasn't tested until the push to strengthen women's rights in the 1960s and 70s. In the 1985 meeting of the quinquennial world convention, delegates voted to allow female pastors to work under a limited "commissioned minister" license, and congregations to ordain female lay elders. The decision was welcome in many parts of the American, European, and Australian church but sat uncomfortably with others, sparking three decades of campaigning against any further moves in that direction. 

Delegates in 2010 requested a Theology of Ordination Study Committee (TOSC) with the hope of settling the question. Impetus was provided by a few smaller judicatories in the United States and Europe that pushed ahead with granting full ordination to the women ministers in their territory. The TOSC convened in 2013. Though the result of that committee's work was encouraging about the possibility of women's ordination in those parts of the world church that wanted it, a motion was presented at the 2015 meeting of the world church without the recommendation from the TOSC.

Three things worked against its passage. 

1. 

   Ted N.C. Wilson
   The shifting of the church to the global south. About three quarters of church membership is now from cultures with traditional roles for women, like Latin America, Africa and southern Asia. 
2. The selection of Ted N.C. Wilson as church president. Wilson, though a North American, won the loyalty of the conservative delegates by promising to fight against the liberalization that many feared was happening in the American church. Wilson is a skilled politician with an authoritarian style, which he used to good effect against the women's ordination movement. 
3. A new theology of male headship. Opponents made a Biblical case for male leadership while also succeeding in grouping women's ordination with homosexuality, which frightened many in the aging demographic of the church.

On July 8, 2015, at the world conference in San Antonio, TX, the motion to allow large geographical regions (divisions) to decide for themselves about women's ordination was defeated 60% to 40%. (To the disappointment of many, who hoped this vote was a referendum on all female church leadership, female commissioned ministers and female lay elders were not eliminated: the motion was confined to the question of whether divisions could grant full ordination to women in their territory.)

The denomination has tried hard to maintain uniformity in both theology and polity throughout its approximately 175-year history. In the latest session much was made of an 1875 statement by Ellen White (ironically) that the General Conference session is the highest authority of God on earth, meaning that the July 8 vote was an ex cathedra decision binding all parts of the church.

Yet some of the judicatories that had already begun ordaining women have said they'll continue to do so, in defiance of the session vote. Which leads most observers to conclude that the question is far from settled.  

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Seventh-Day Adventists Vote Against Ordaining Women

Seventh-day Adventists affirm women in ministry, but vote down their ordination

What We Haven't Understood about ISIS

by Loren Seibold

The cover piece from the March Atlantic about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has received wide recognition, and for good reason: it's the most cogent explanation so far of this brutal Middle-Eastern movement. Most of us, when we heard of it, assumed ISIS was more of the same: another al-Qaeda-like terror organization. Graeme Wood explains its significant differences:

• Its level of devotion to what it regards as real Islam far exceeds that of the conservative Islamic groups we now know—and it's directed against other Muslims as much as against us infidels. While we take note of ISIS's beheading of a handful of Westerners, takfiri, excommunication of Muslims, is central to the movement, even requiring tortures such as amputations and beheading for Muslims who don't behave. ISIS is a brand of Islam that requires discipline and full devotion, which is what has made it attractive to Muslims all over the world. Furthermore, it holds al-Qaeda in contempt for not sufficiently embracing and enforcing piety.
• It's a territorial movement, revolving around the establishment of a geographical caliphate. Note that ISIS's terrorist acts have been within their territory, and they're not likely to become an offensive threat toward other nations until the caliphate is secure. Wood says, "Its threat to the United States is smaller than its all too frequent conflation with al-Qaeda would suggest." It seeks no recognition by other nations, nor other Muslims, and probably never will.
• It is also an apocalyptic movement. Al-qaeda has a self-destructive, psychopathic streak, but ISIS has a precise eschatology in mind that, they say, must lead to an end-time showdown in Dabiq, Syria. Where al-Qaeda is furtive and conveys confused motives, ISIS is relatively transparent, its intentions known. 
• The strategies that have worked with other Islamic groups might not be applicable here. For example, sending tens of thousands of Americans in to defeat them would fulfill ISIS's prophecies and thus legitimize it. Says Wood, "The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself."

Wood adds an important nuance for those of us who have wanted to believe that Islamic terror sects don't represent real Islam. ISIS is, in fact, purely Islamic, following the letter of the Koran and the hadiths, though with a distinctly restorationist hermeneutic. "People want to absolve Islam," Wood quotes scholar Bernard Haykel. "It's this 'Islam is a religion of peace' mantra. As if there is such a thing as 'Islam'! [Islam is] what Muslims do and how they interpret their texts." Which is to say, Islam need not necessarily be violent, but it would be a mistake not to recognize that violent ISIS is Islamic.

Fortunately, Wood's entire piece is on line, and is well worth reading in its entirety here.

Class Warfare and Religion in the United States

By Monte Sahlin

America has always prided itself in being a society unlike many places in Europe and the southern Hemisphere where there are large differences between the elite and the masses. (In fact, Europe has changed significantly over the last half century and more recently there have been emerging middle classes in Brazil, India and other developing nations.) For decades the vast majority of Americans have told surveys that they are "middle class" in proportions that quite different than household income data would indicate. Most Americans have thought of themselves as "middle class" until the emergence of "culture wars" in recent decades in which Christian activists of various kinds have had a role, but the most powerful dynamics seem to be a tension between traditional culture and "cultural creatives" that has strong economic and political correlations.

"Class warfare in America is over," points out a recent issue of Christian Century. "And the well-to-do have won. The result is that the less well-to-do are being shut out of the decision-making process. Very few working-class Americans get into government, even at the state level. Running for office is so expensive that only wealthy Americans aspire to elected office. Once in office they reflect their own class. Social safety net programs are stingier, business regulations are flimsier, and tax policies are more regressive than they would be if our politicians came from the same mix of classes as the people they represent." (Oct. 1, 2014, pp. 8-9)

Has conservative Protestant faith become captive to this traditional culture political/economic dynamic? Historically African American congregations (of all denominations) have traditionally put much energy into helping the poor and promoting education, but now some are becoming more middle class and less involved in community service. In white Evangelical congregation (of many denominations) it is common to find a significant share of the members how think that helping the poor "is not really the mission of the church" and a narrowing of focus to strictly religious activities and support for typical middle class family life.

I see/hear more and more condescending remarks by Christians labeling as "leftist, socialist" any initiative or ministry or expression seeking to address social justice. Has political philosophy and class self-interests erased or modified in the minds of these Christians (who usually read the Bible in a very literal manner) the plain statements of Jesus in a number of places in the New Testament such as Matthew 25:31-46?

This particular passage interests me because it is in the context of the "sermon" of Jesus recorded in Matthew 24-25 which is so relevant to my Adventist faith. It begins with a question from His disciples about when He will return and when will be the end of the world, and specifically focuses on how to live in an eschatological context. There are many other texts that are equally clear about the value that God places on social justice. A friend told me recently that "social justice is heresy." Is that true, or is the shaping of conservative Protestant faith by anti-social justice views the real heresy in God's eyes?

Americans Like Jews Better than Mormons and Muslims

by Loren Seibold 

For a June Pew Research Center study researchers asked what appears at first to be a fairly uncomplicated question: rate on a scale of warmest to coolest your feelings about a named religious group. Jews, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians elicited the warmest feelings; Mormons, athiests and Muslims the coolest.

• Not surprising is that we tend to be most warm toward the group we personally identify with, and Christians were most strongly represented in the survey group. The odd outlier here is the warmth felt toward Jews, who were a relatively small proportion of the panel surveyed (only 100 individuals out of a group of  3217). Does this reflect the links between Judaism and Christianity, particularly Evangelical Christians whose theology posits a central rôle for Israel in end time events? Or the outsize place of Jews in public life? Yet for their part, Jews felt quite negative toward Evangelicals—more negative than they do toward Muslims!

• While Mormons believe in Christ, and Islam is a fellow Abrahamic religion, these ended up near the bottom of the list. I am surprised by the antipathy toward Mormons, given that we have seen so many Mormons successful in American life, including a presidential candidate who was popular with Catholics and Evangelicals. Note that Islam, even though  historically related to Christianity, rated lower than rather alien eastern religions like Hinduism—and even lower than atheism.

• The survey showed that American atheists feel more positive about Jews, Hindus and Buddhists than about any of the Christian faiths. The eastern religions have strong strains of non-theism, though it isn't clear if that's what makes them more palatable to atheists, or whether it's because they tend to be less doctrinaire and evangelistic than the Abrahamic religions.

• The feelings of people with Republican leanings were more polarized toward Christianity and against atheists and Muslims than those leaning Democratic. Democrats' answers clustered to the center, suggesting less strong feelings about religion generally. There's also an age divide: older Americans felt warmer toward Jews, Evangelicals and Catholics, while younger Americans gave higher ratings to atheists and Muslims than did their elders.

• The study showed that simply knowing someone of a particular religious group results in warmer feelings about that group—proving that ignorance about those who differ from us may be the reason for our prejudices about them. 

Note that the survey asks for respondents' feelings, not what one thinks about a group's doctrine, actions, or reputation. Though one would suppose that feelings and thoughts would closely reflect one another, I wonder whether the results would look different if they'd asked people to react to the named religion in a different way.

Related articles

Pew survey: Jews most popular religious group in U.S.

Was PBS's "Secrets of the Vatican" Anti-Catholic?

My wife and I watched Frontline's "Secrets of the Vatican" in a stunned silence. There wasn't any single item there that was entirely new to us. Pedophilic priests, corruption in the Vatican Bank, a secretive Curia, the cult-like Legion of Christ, blatantly homosexual priests—all have been reported before. Frontline brought these things together in a way that leaves one feeling the erosion of the moral and spiritual foundation of the Roman church. Its only hope, it seems to me, is deep organizational repentance. 

But that's not how some Roman Catholic apologists see it. Bill Donohue of The Catholic League called "Secrets of the Vatican" "contrived," a "hit job" by "Catholic bashers."  But it's hard to argue with the central contentions of the piece, all of which are well-documented—and when Donohue tries, he sounds disingenuous. Of sexual abuse, "This problem is practically non-existent in the Catholic community these days, and is rampant in the public schools, as well as in the Orthodox Jewish community."

It is hard to hear bad things about an organization you love. But this is a classic example of the denial one hears frequently from offenders and defenders of offenders, and surprisingly often in a religious context. Examples:

1. It didn't happen. Or it isn't happening anymore. Or it's been greatly exaggerated. Or it's a thing of the past, and anyway, you should mind your own damn business.

2. And if it did happen, others are doing worse things, and you should be accusing them rather than us. Donohue: "None of these people at PBS give a hoot about the sexual abuse of minors, for if they did, they would cover those communities where it is thriving."

3. It isn't what you said, it's how you said it. Donohue complains about cinematography—"ominous dark images; dramatic music; a deep voice-over; bleak hallways; shadowy figures locking doors as a boy enters the room; the words 'Power,' Money,' and 'Sex' flashing about"—as though that minimizes the offenses documented.

4. Even if the accusations are true, we can find a few items in your presentation that are arguable or inaccurate, so that negates the rest of what you say. This blog is a good example.

5. You may be worse for pointing out our sins than we are for having committed them, because you're not forgiving and giving us a chance. I recently read a call to forgive and restore a Protestant clergyman rapist because he is such an effective proponent for a certain conservative point of view. "It was just a momentary lapse [with 8 different women identified so far] and he's beyond it now. As a Christian you have to forgive and forget and let him get on with his important ministry."

6. It's not the organization, it's just individuals in the organization. Never mind what the organization claims to be, or its authority over its people: the organization can't take responsibility for what its employees do. Catholic writer Adam Bowers, who blogs under the nom de plume Quartermaster of the Barque, adds, "This is all bad, evil stuff, but it is unfair to imply that the reasons are institutional rather than individual." My God, Adam—really? If there is nothing institutional contributing to the pedophilia in the church, then why is it so concentrated there? And, if there's no institutional reason for it, then there's nothing the church can do to correct it, either. Children, beware.

7. You just don't like us because of who we are, so our offenses, no matter how egregious, are incidental.

There are bits of truth scampering through all these excuses, but they conspire to minimize and deny horrendous problems. True, there may be less priestly pedophilia right now, with the spotlight focused so intensely on it. Yet this church first denied pedophilia, lied about it, hid it, defended priests they knew were guilty, and drug their feet about preventing it. And yes, of course sexual abuse happens in other communities, too, but that doesn't mean you're off the hook.

As for the organization having no culpability: the Roman Catholic church isn't a loose, informal gathering of like-minded individuals, like, say, Justin Beiber fans, but one of the oldest, wealthiest, most powerful and authoritarian organizations in the world, an employer of millions, and one which claims to have authority over the present behavior and eternal salvation of billions, living and dead. 

We all should hate the kind of prejudicial anti-Catholicism that references crimes of centuries ago, or resurrects old myths and lies. But there's no way that current Roman Catholic church leaders can wriggle out of responsibility for terrible things that happened, and are happening, because of their action or inaction.

Bowers adds this disgustingly self-pitying "do what we say, ignore what we do" comment: 

"In other words, the Church isn’t despised because of the sexual abuse crisis or any other scandal (this is just delicious opportunity); she is hated because in spite of the sin and hypocrisy of all of her members, she always holds to what is true, even while all of us individual Catholics perpetually fall short."

What puerile nonsense. Your truth is only as good as how you live it. Roman Catholic churchmen have allowed untold suffering because of arrogant and unrepentant ecclesiasticism. It's far too soon for them to claim they've repented enough and can move on to being victims. And to their credit, the wisest among them are taking responsibility for it.

What we saw on Frontline wasn't perfect reportage, but it wasn't anti-Catholicism, either. It was the press holding accountable an organization that hasn't managed to do that for itself. 

Americans Are Increasingly Polarized, Pew Finds

The Pew Research Center’s recent study puts numbers to something I think we’ve all knew was happening: an increasing political polarization between left and right in the United States. 

My family of origin was rather apolitical: there were no impassioned speeches about the necessity of one party over the other. My father leaned mildly in the direction of the Republican party, which he thought might do a better job for small businesses like his. I was aware that others in my community thought the other party was better, but I don’t ever remember fierce arguments or accusations. All political discourse, should it happen, was overlaid was two contrasting feelings: that the leaders, whatever their party, deserved respect as long as they were doing something, and at the same time that the whole enterprise of government was by its nature slightly soiled, and there probably wasn’t a whole lot of difference between one candidate and the other in that regard. 

After studying the latest Pew survey, I suspect that their attitude was probably typical of the time: people simply weren’t as passionate about their political ideology as they are now. Here’s Pew’s summary statement:

 “The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.”

That people are more polarized is, it seems to me, the less surprising finding. More consequential  is that everyone is angrier. 27% of Democrats see the Republican party as a threat to the nation’s well-being, and a whopping 36% of Republicans think the same of the Democrats. When pushed to explain, Pew’s Carroll Doherty admits that the “greater levels of partisan antipathy” are “currently more acute on the right than on the left.” It’s even more intense when when the split is thought of in terms of ideology rather than party. “Among consistently conservative Republicans, 66% regard Democratic policies as a threat to the nation’s well-being. Substantially fewer (50%) of consistently liberal Democrats think Republican policies represent a threat to the nation.”

There’s undoubtedly a religious element here: conservative Christianity is a major factor with conservative voters.  To what extent is this this mutual hatred reflected in religion, and could it lead us into religious strife as is happening in many of the world’s nations right now? 

New Book About Waco Reopens Questions

By Loren Seibold

When the Waco siege happened, I was a Seventh-day Adventist pastor studying in a Presbyterian seminary. I remember my embarrassment at the questions in class the day it happened. I did what the rest of the Seventh-day Adventist church did: denied that the Branch Davidian had anything to do with us—even though they were a historical offshoot of the church, most of them ex or current Seventh-day Adventists, and studied the same prophecies and prophet (Ellen G. White) that we did.

Clive Doyle was one of the few believers to escape the fire in the Waco compound. He’s now written a new book called Journey to Waco. “If people read this account, they will at least gain a different perspective on who David Koresh was, where he was coming from, who we were, and why we believe the way we do,” he says. “Most people think ‘cult’ about us and think we are people who were brainwashed and deceived. They think our church members don’t know what they’re doing or where they’re going. Hopefully, my story can open their eyes.”

Indeed, most people do think cult. In a review in The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell brings together the literature on the subject to show that almost no one tried to understand Koresh or why people were in the compound. The ATF prepared a response for bank robbers, when they were dealing with quiet, principled Bible students. The besiegers mishandled every step of the process. Whatever paranoia the group had extracted from Scripture (it was centered around an interpretation of Revelation's 5th seal) the ATF’s ham-handed raid reinforced.

Koresh was, to be sure, an odd yet charismatic character, and his taking young spiritual brides was repugnant. But it was all based on Scriptural explanations that most of the compound had accepted. As another Branch Davidianist, Steve Schneider, said, “All of these places talk about a man in the last days that’s a sinner. He can do one thing, open up the words of the book, open up the Seven Seals. Can’t do any miracles, doesn’t raise the dead, heal the sick, isn’t a psychic but . . . if people have questions about life and death, eternal life, no matter what the question is, he will show it in context from the book.” And Koresh could, at least to the satisfaction of his followers.

Conspicuously absent from any attempt to solve the standoff was the Seventh-day Adventist church, its theologians and leaders. At the time, the denomination, always nervous about being perceived as a cult, denied any connection to the Branch Davidian. The theologian who stepped in to try to solve the problem by looking at it through the cultists’ eyes was James Tabor of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. He engaged Koresh on his own terms, Koresh even implying he'd turn himself in when his study of Revelation with Tabor was complete. Writes Gladwell, “Tabor and Arnold made a tape—a long, technical discussion of an alternative reading of Revelation—aired it on the radio, and sent it to Koresh. Koresh listened and was persuaded. He had been called a liar, a child molester, a con man, and a phony messiah. He had been invited to treat his children like bargaining chips and his followers like hostages. But now someone was taking his beliefs seriously.”

But the ATF refused to wait even a few days.

Even if you don’t read the book (and much of it is self-serving, as Doyle is still a believer), do read “Sacred and Profane” by Gladwell. It’s a mind-bending exploration of why we don't listen to people who are different from us.

Lennon the Prophet

by Loren Seibold

I am still astonished when I recall the instant appeal that the Beatles had to my friends and me. I was in the third grade, and had only heard the song once or twice—popular music was switched off by my conservative Christian parents—yet I remember singing and miming “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” with my cousins as though the song belonged to us. This despite being too young to really understand what it meant, and knowing how much our parents disapproved of everything it represented.

Today the music is uncontroversial—quaint, even. We’ve mostly forgotten how threatening the Beatles were to Christians back then. The screaming girls and long hair were alarming enough. But John Lennon clinched the animosity in an interview in the London Evening Standard:

"Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first—rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

Lennon claimed to have been misunderstood, and apologized, sort of: “I'm all for Christ, I'm very big on Christ,” he said. “I've always fancied him. He was right. As he said in his book, 'you'll get knocked if you follow my ways.'" But in the United States the statement had already triggered pickets, boycotts, record burnings and concert cancellations. The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles album to a cross.

It left good children like me racked between my love for Jesus and the strong draw of the new popular culture. I didn’t want to use drugs or be promiscuous. But how appealing the fashions, sounds and energy!—especially over against the stern, fearful world of apocalyptic Christianity in which I grew up.

Nearly 50 years on, what Lennon said still sounds a prophetic note about the conflict between religion and culture: religion, with its bulky-foundationed authority claims, against creativity and change. Lennon was arrogant, to be sure, this freshly-crowned pope of the young, but he was also right. Today Christianity in his home country is nearly dead, and in the rest of the Western world it is declining. Lennon described the feelings millions of today's spiritual-but-not-religious when he said that Christ was admirable, an agent of peace and love, but that his “thick and ordinary" followers ruined it by twisting His message into something supportive of opulent cathedrals, exclusive hierarchies, and a selfishly-selective Biblical message.

“More popular than Jesus” didn't last: the Beatles, as significant as they were, were subject to the same diminishment that happens to all who float in a stream of rapid change. Change, after all, is a movement, not a state. How can prophets compete with gods, the symbols of immortality, or even with their human agents? Lennon seemed to understand, at least for a time, that he was a spiritual figure, pursuing religious experience and even affecting a Jesusine appearance. He placed his considerable influence on the side of peace and freedom, as had Jesus, and (as he’d noted about Jesus) was opposed for it. (It wasn't a coincidence that he chose to describe his situation,  "The way things are going/ They’re gonna crucify me.") The dominant culture was correct that a new kind of libertinism followed in the wake of Lennon and his peers. But like all power structures in all ages, they had (and have) enough sins of their own. Years later Lennon noted in passing that his saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus had “upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan"—not to mention religious hypocrites and warmongers of all sorts.

In the end he was killed not by the powerful for the sake of truth, but by one mentally ill stranger. By that time Lennon's identity as a spiritual figure had diminished. The world remembered, but had moved on. Lennon and his wife had themselves become part of the cultural elite, even while embittered against his former friends over (what else?) money.

It is, at least, a lesson in the timing of martyrdom.

Related articles

Paul, George, Ringo & the Prophet John

Scott Stossel and the Pros and Cons of Telling All

by Loren Seibold

Confession has never been out of style. Three millennia ago King David set down his sinfulness (Psalm 51), his depression (Psalm 6) and his paranoia (Psalm 31) in sometimes embarrassing detail—and people still sing his poetry in church. In his Confessions Augustine of Hippo roamed between theology, debauchery and penitence, and shaped Christianity for the next 2000 years. Much later Victorian author Thomas De Quincy revealed his opium addiction in a book-length essay. “I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess, not yet recorded of any other man,” he says. (Though he adds that he has an unrecorded acquaintance—known to be Samuel Taylor Coleridge—whose drug usage quite left De Quincy in the opium dust.)

Even in the age of the tell-all, Senior Atlantic editor Scott Stossel’s new book (excerpted in a cover story in the January Atlantic) is still shocking. For a world-class editor like Stossel to admit that in professional settings he is often drugged and half drunk and searching for a bathroom to vomit in, is more than just a disturbing picture. True it may be, but it’s also a reminder that only the financially and professionally secure have the freedom to tell the whole truth. Could you admit all of that and still climb to the top of your profession?

I have mixed feelings about the published confession. “Nothing, indeed,” writes De Quincy in the introduction to Confessions of an Opium Eater, “is more revolting to English feelings, than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars.” Yet if it is so revolting, why is confession (and its sibling, the memoir) so eagerly devoured? Why is his wandering the slums of English cities the only thing we still remember about Thomas De Quincy? If the problem confessed about isn’t yours, the likely payoff is a kind of self-congratulation: “God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men.”

Those who nowadays write bold confessions often say they want to lift the veil, to empower sufferers to seek help. A pastor breaks the silence about his pornography addiction, a pharmacist about pushing pills, a TV star about childhood abuse. My Age of Anxiety falls into this category: after all, 40,000,000 Americans (Stossel’s number) suffer from his problem. So unlike some confessions, Stossel’s is not spiritual or moral, but medical and psychological. He’s a victim of crippling anxiety that he can trace far down his family tree. Fortunately, he can also trace down that same tree enough talent, intelligence and privilege to give him the wherewithal to try every therapy on the planet, and have an audience when he writes about it. 

What is anxiety, exactly? At bottom it’s a natural coping mechanism, the fight-or-flight response that keeps creatures alive. But for people like Stossel, it’s all gone terribly wrong. Quote: 

“The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and culture. Even as anxiety is experienced at a spiritual and psychological level, it is scientifically measurable at the molecular level and the physiological level. It is produced by nature and it is produced by nurture. It’s a psychological phenomenon and a sociological phenomenon. In computer terms, it’s both a hardware problem (I’m wired badly) and a software problem (I run faulty logic programs that make me think anxious thoughts).”

As painful as this book is to read, its vivid prose unmasks the problem in a way that might open doors for other sufferers. Yet I wouldn’t be surprised if the readers who find it therapeutic are well outnumbered by those who are merely indulgent upon another’s misfortunes.

Related articles

My apology to Scott Stossel, or, The Atlantic article about anxiety that hit too close to home

Louis Menand: What does anxiety mean?

Religious Persecution Still Happening, Increasing

By Loren Seibold

Americans tend to take the measure of religious hostility from their own relatively calm religious culture. While we see interest in religion (and to some extent, conflict about it) declining here, religion remains a major social force elsewhere. Still, a surprising number of fundamentalist, charismatic and restorationist movements claim to rely on increased religious persecution as the marker for Christ's soon return. Some, like Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, and Jehovah's Witnesses, all of whom have some form of personal persecution in their eschatology, have at times actively searched for and made note of signs of hostility against themselves, which they find useful to motivate their base.

According to a recent study by the Pew Center's Religion and Public Life Project, hostilities involving religion reached a six-year peak in 2012. About a third of the 198 countries inluded in the project experienced significant religious hostilities in 2012. A quote: 

Religious hostilities increased in every major region of the world except the Americas. The sharpest increase was in the Middle East and North Africa, which still is feeling the effects of the 2010-11 political uprisings known as the Arab Spring. There also was a significant increase in religious hostilities in the Asia-Pacific region, where China edged into the “high” category for the first time.… Among the world’s 25 most populous countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Russia, Pakistan and Burma (Myanmar) had the most restrictions on religion in 2012, when both government restrictions and social hostilities are taken into account.

As the last sentence indicates, the study draws a distinction between social hostilities and hostilities instigated by government restrictions on religious practice. This latter has stayed about level, with roughly 3 in 10 countries maintaining high or very high restrictions on religious practice. 

Some contrasts from 2011:

• Abuse of religious minorities by private individuals or groups for acts perceived as offensive or threatening to the majority faith: up from 38% to 47% of the countries studied

• Violence, or the threat of violence used to compel people to adhere to religious norms: 39% of the countries, up from 33%

• Harassment of women over religious dress: up from 25% to 32%

• Mob violence related to religion: up from 18% in 2011 to 25% in 2012

• Religion-related terrorist violence: remaining level at 20% of countries in the study

• Sectarian violence: 18% of the countries in the survey, up from 15%

And which religions are having the most trouble? From the Pew Center study:

Members of the world’s two largest religious groups – Christians and Muslims, who together comprise more than half of the global population – were harassed in the largest number of countries, 151 and 135, respectively. Jews, who comprise less than 1% of the world’s population, experienced harassment in a total of 95 countries, while members of other world faiths were harassed in a total of 77 countries.

Looked at regionally, you won't be surprised that the Middle East and Northern Africa top the list of places with the most religious strife. (Among Muslims, intersectarian violence is still more common than hostility against the West.) The big surprise is the amount of religious hostility in secular Europe, which matches the Asia-Pacific region in number of countries where hostility occurred. One big reason there: harassment of women for religious dress, specifically Muslim women who wear face coverings. 

Most American Christians have ignored hostility against other religions, or against Christians in other places. It might be wise for us to consider the possibility that what happens elsewhere and to others could happen here, and to us. 

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Pew: Religious Hostility Reaches Six-Year High Worldwide