Religions push to address environmental issues

So there is something we can all agree on...

Leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha'i, Jain and Zoroastrian faiths called on G20 nations to cut greenhouse gases.

They said climate change posed a "very real threat to the world's poor".

Their joint call at a meeting at Lambeth Palace in London precedes the Copenhagen summit which aims to deliver a new global climate treaty.

In a statement, the religious leaders urged G20 governments to fight for a deal which would quickly end global reliance on fossil fuels.

Read full article.

Image from BBC News.

“Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian”

A new book called "Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian" by Paul F. Knitter.

From the NY Times article:

“Am I still a Christian?” he asks in his new book. It is a question posed over the years by others, including some unhappy officials in the Vatican. But the question, he writes, is also “one I have felt in my own mind and heart.”

“Has my dialogue with Buddhism made me a Buddhist Christian?” he writes. “Or a Christian Buddhist? Am I a Christian who has understood his own identity more deeply with the help of Buddhism? Or have I become a Buddhist who still retains a stock of Christian leftovers.”

Christian Disneyland

Florida...famous for Universal Studios, Disneyworld, and ... the Holy Land Experience?
Watch this video clip from Newsweek and see if you're up for a visit to this Christian theme park.



I was curious as to whether or not there are Buddhist theme parks. It turns out there's a Buddhist theme park in Saigon, Vietnam called Suoi Tien Park that features the torments of Buddhist Hell. Quite interesting. Here are some pictures of the park, which in my opinion looks pretty intricate and detailed.

Anyone else know of any religious theme parks?

What is your concept of eternity?

Ah, my favorite type of articles. The News & Observer features "Voices of Faith", in which Rev. R.L. Baynham, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church, and Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery provide insight from their respective faiths. In this article, they discuss "What is your concept of eternity?"

Rev. R.L. Baynham: Eternity is an attribute of God, and he alone fathoms its depths. We are challenged to live within the divine purpose of God's will as ascribed in the Bible. When we live in harmony with our purpose, we experience life as it is supposed to be. We understand the purpose is to live a full, meaningful life.

Lama Chuck Stanford: Unlike the monotheistic faiths, Buddhism has no concept of eternity after death. In fact, from the Buddhist perspective, death is viewed as a very temporary state between a nearly infinite number of rebirths.

Read full article.

Inter-religious Open House

Hi UBA friends,

Here are some details on the event that was mentioned this week at our meditation meeting. It looks like an interesting chance to check out some of the different faiths and traditions that UCLA has to offer, including a tour of some of the actual facilities offering different religious services, so many of you may want to check it out. Rev. Kusala will be among those giving presentations towards the beginning of the event.

****
Inter-religious Open House
When: Saturday, January 31, 2009
Time: 11:00am - 2:30pm
Location: UCLA Campus (meeting at the University Catholic Center, 633 Gayley Ave)
What: a tour of four houses of worship/meditation at UCLA, with short presentations from other religious groups

Goal:
- to educate ourselves of the commonalities and rich diversity among different religions
- to celebrate together the richness and diversity of organized spirituality here at UCLA

Houses of worship to be visited (in order):
University Catholic Center
University Lutheran Chapel
Hillel
St. Alban's Episcopal Church

Other religious groups participating:
Univ. Buddhist Assoc., MTO Suffi Assoc., Wesley Foundation, Hindu Student Council, and the Univ. Presbyterian Church.

Worried about lunch? Well Don't!
We will be starting with a FREE Continental Breakfast and ending with a FREE Lunch (we'll be taking into consideration the dietary needs of all participating religious groups)

This is really a great opportunity to meet new people from many different backgrounds, build relations with other groups on campus, and get a glimpse of just a few religious groups at UCLA (not to mention, getting a free bite to eat)!

***As a side note, for those of you on Facebook, it might be helpful to search for the event (by the name "inter-religious open house") and RSVP to it, just to give the organizers a better idea of how much food to buy.

China revives religion

Religion is becoming less taboo and accepted once again as a part of society.

"A government-sponsored survey last year found that 300 million Chinese, or 31.4% of the country’s adult population, considered themselves religious believers, much larger than the government estimate of around 100 million.

Two-thirds of the believers are Buddhists, Taoists or devotees of traditional deities such as the Dragon King or God of Fortune. The survey estimated that 12% of all believers—or 40 million—were Christians, up from 16 million in 2005. That makes Christianity one of the fastest-growing religions in China. Some foreign estimates put the estimated number of Christians even higher, from 50 to 70 million. Many attend independent, unregistered house churches."

So what's the status of Buddhism in China?

"Looking at it from a different perspective, particularly with regard to Buddhism, is Master Xuecheng, vice-president of the Buddhist Association of China, and abbot of four monasteries including the Longquan monastery in Beijing. He argued that once people have satisfied their basic needs and wants such as housing and food, they would have more spiritual demands.

He added: “Only when a society has prospered and developed can it have the strength to tolerate different kinds of thinking…Only after a society has prospered to a certain level can it have considerable numbers of people with relatively high standards of knowledge and, therefore, the qualification to devote themselves to the study of Buddhist scriptures.”

He cited as evidence the fact that Buddhism flourished during ancient China’s golden age, the Tang Dynasty, particularly in the region of Chang’an (present-day Xian), at the Chinese end of the Silk Road.

Liu, who has also explored Buddhism, finds Buddhist scriptures too difficult to grasp. They run into thousands of volumes compared with the one-volume Bible for Christians and the Koran for Muslims.

Besides, Buddhism “requires you to give up a lot in life”, said Liu, adding that she found this hard to accept. Buddhists strive ultimately to chushi, withdraw from the world, she argued."

Read full article.

Religious Diversity in the 111th Congress

I am happy to be able to start posting again. I recently sent my computer to be fixed and now that I just picked it up, I feel reconnected with the world. This bit of news is quite interesting, another addition to all the other diversity issues in 2009 politics.

"Two years ago, Keith Ellison became Congress’ first Muslim member; shortly after Rep. Pete Stark outed himself as Congress’ first openly atheist elected official. The 110th Congress also saw the arrival of two Buddhist politicians, another first. Those Buddhists, as well as Ellison and another Muslim, are back for the 111th Congress, which began today and the Pew Forum says looks a lot more like the people it represents:

Although a majority of the members of the new, 111th Congress, which will be sworn in on Jan. 6, are Protestants, Congress - like the nation as a whole - is much more religiously diverse than it was 50 years ago."

Read full article.

Photo from The Jewish Journal.

Faith Q&A

Lama Chuck Stanford from Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery and the Rev. R.L. Baynham, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church, offer answers from their respective faiths.

Q: Do you think it's possible to have a society that doesn't believe in God and yet is law-abiding and peaceful?

For their answers, please go to the full article.

Buddhists gone bad in Bangladesh

Buddhist monks in cooperation with local council officials are holding 13 converted tribal Christians captive to try to convert them to Buddhism by force. They are being held captive in a pagoda in a southeastern mountainous district of Bangladesh.

According to the Compass Direct News article, the Bangladeshi population is 90% Muslim, 9% Hindus, and 0.7% Buddhist, leaving less than 0.3% of the population left to be Christian or other.

Read full article.

Christianity an Asian religion?

A great article by Philip Jenkins, a Penn State professor and author, about Christian expansion to Asia and the often overlooked interaction Buddhist and Chrisitan had in the past. He argues:

"Yet the reality is that Christianity has from its earliest days been an intercontinental faith, as firmly established in Asia and Africa as in Europe itself."

" Christianity, for much of its history, was just as much an Asian religion as Buddhism. Asia's Christian churches survived for more than a millennium, and not until the 10th century, halfway through Christian history, did the number of Christians in Europe exceed that in Asia."

Above is an image of a cross with a lotus flower on it, a symbol mentioned in the article to show the Christian-Buddhist connections.

Read full article.

Responses to "The Bible and Homosexuality"

Newsweek's recent cover story, "Our Mutual Joy", featured an article written by religion editor Lisa Miller about what the Bible really says about gay marriage. Since then, Newsweek has been receiving many comments and emails from all sides of the debate. Kurt Soller shares some of the feedback with us:

"The Atlanta Journal Constitution's political blog linked to the Politico piece and pointed out the comments made by Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition. 'I see it as an attempt to caricature and reduce to a cartoon the social conservative belief in the efficacy of a traditional marriage, and try to reduce it to some formulaic, scriptural literalism,' he said. 'There's more of a practical, sociological foundation for why we seek to affirm marriage as an institution than I think is generally understood by those who want to legalize same-sex marriage.' "


Here's Newsweek's recent cover story, "Our Mutual Joy".

The Bible and Homosexuality

Newsweek features the article "Our Mutual Joy", exploring what the Bible really says about homosexuality.

"If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)." The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

Christians adopting meditation

Many Christian Americans have incorporated meditation into their spiritual practice. While meditation used to be considered New Age and a counterculture activity, it has slowly made its way into the daily routines of many Christians as a way of dealing with their busy lives.

"A report released this year showed an astonishingly high number of Protestants — nearly half — say they meditate at least once a week. Among the public, 39 percent meditate at least weekly, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

It's no surprise that people are seeking paths to peace and serenity in our high-octane, 24-hour world.

'We're a mentally focused, hard-core, achievement-oriented society,' says Dr. J. David Forbes, a medical doctor and meditation teacher in Nashville. 'People are finding it hard to quiet the brain down.'"

Meditation, however, still has its share of criticism from Christianity.

"Meditation has been, at times, eyed with suspicion. The Vatican in 1989 went so far as to say that methods such as Zen, yoga and transcendental meditation, can 'degenerate into a cult of the body' and be dangerous.

And the notion that meditation is too way out there for Christians, if not rooted in the Bible, still exists today.

'The idea of emptying the mind is not biblically based,' says Don Whitney, associate professor of biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. 'There can be a danger.'

Referring to meditation's long association with Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions, Whitney says, 'Some of the yoga stuff, where you're given a mantra, that is rooted in false religions.' He sees no problem with stretching, but once you start chanting, you're treading on treacherous ground, he says.

His beef is that some people are seeking tools to help them live and de-stress. 'That's very selfish,' he says. 'Our lives should be lived to the glory of God.'"

Though not a traditional activity of Christianity, meditation still proves to be empowering for those who practice it.

"A Christian who attends an interdenominational church and considers herself nondenominational, Finch, 42, has also been attending a Buddhist center to meditate.

'Going to church is where I'm being talked to. There is not a lot of silent time,' Finch says. 'I feel the power and presence of God through my meditation.'"

Religious Problems in SK

Here's the latest update of the Buddhist protests against the South Korean government as result of what the Buddhist community feel is religious bias. The Buddhist leaders have put great pressure on the South Korean administration to issue a public apology and the President Lee Myung-bak said on Tuesday, "It is deeply regrettable that some officials caused misunderstanding among Buddhists and thus hurt their feelings.'' However, the Buddhists don't buy it. Now they are demanding another public apology and the dismissal of the police chief. If the President does not comply, Buddhist leaders threaten to hold massive rallies nationwide.

Now how did this situation get so messy? Was it the result of the administration mishandling the apology and policy reforms? Or are the Buddhist leaders just being too stubborn? Certainly, even in America, where the Constitution separates the Church from state in the same way the South Korean Constitution does, Christianity has more obvious role in government and politics (just look at the presidential campaigns) than that of South Korean. So why don't non-Christian groups in America protest in the name of religious discrimination? Why is the SK administration having trouble handling the situation and why are the Budddhists still dissatisfied?

Well, as many might suspect, religion in SK society is very different than religion in American society. Firstly, the government is most likely not used to confronting religious issues. In a country where protests at the capital are quite common, massive religious rallies are considered rare. Furthermore the percentage of the population that identify with a religion is very different from that of America. To begin with, 2005 statistics found on Wikipedia state about 46.5% of South Koreans express no religious preference, 29.3% are Christians, 22.8% are Buddhist, and the rest adhere to several different new religious movements created under the increasing influence of Christianity and Western culture. In America, 2007 statistics from the CIA World Factbook state 51.3% Protestants, 23.9% Roman Catholics, 1.7% Mormon, 1.6% other Christian, 1.7% Jewish, 0.7% Buddhist, 0.6% Muslim, 2.5% other or unspecified, 12.1% unaffiliated, 4%none. What is apparent is that not only does SK have less religious diversity, but also there is a large portion of people who are not religious at all. The administration probably isn't used to addressing political issues using religion in the same way the US administration addresses issues such as abortion, homosexuality and marriage, and cvolution vs creation using Christianity.

The Buddhist community is also having a hard time handling this situation probably because the presence of Christianity in SK is still relatively new, as it has played key roles in democratic movements and national modernization since the 1980s. In America, though we have great religous diversity, the majority of followers are still Christian while in Korea, there is a close percentage between Christian and Buddhist followers. With such close numbers, there's bound to be competition and conflicts between the once deeply-rooted traditional religions of Buddhism, Shamanism, and Confucianism and the relatively new and expanding religion of Christianity. In America, we have yet to see any religion challenge the spotlight of Christianity.

Hopefully, compromise will be reached between the SK administration and Buddhist leaders. They better find a way to coexist peacefully; after all, neither the Christians nor the Buddhists look like they're going anywhere.