"I do think we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian."

He said this in an interview with Rachel Johnson for LBC radio, in which they discussed how the Muslim month of Ramadan was being celebrated in London's Oxford Street, instead of the Christian feast of Easter.

Dawkins, whose scientist atheism was memorably dismantled by the critique of Terry Eagleton, said in that same interview that he recognised the benefits of Christian culture and enjoyed "living in a culturally Christian country".

At the same time though, he did "not believe a word of the Christian faith".

In slightly different terms, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim and now former atheist, recently declared that she has converted to Christianity: the announcement of a political conversion, as a "desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition."

This is one of the possible responses to the collapse of cultural Christianity in Europe and in the West: not just in terms of the political inability of the Churches to maintain a certain role of religion in the public square through legislation, however.

It's also a possible response in terms of "ex-culturation" (as French sociologist of religion Danièle Hervieu-Léger called it more than two decades ago) and "de-culturation" (as French political scientist Olivier Roy named it in more recent times).

This is not new.

I remember the attempt in the mid-1990s by Cardinal Camillo Ruini (for many years president of the Italian bishops' conference and John Paul II's vicar for the Diocese of Rome), to launch a "cultural project" for Italian Catholicism.

One of the unintended (or maybe intended) consequences of that project was the rise in Berlusconi's Italy between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s of the so-called "devout atheists" on the right side of the ideological spectrum.

It's a project which evidently did not accomplish its goals given that Italian Catholicism is on its way, even though in its own way, towards ex-culturation and de-culturation similar to other European countries.

Relationship between Gospel and culture

Until a few years ago, a certain kind of progressive and liberal Catholic used to rejoice for the collapse of cultural Christianity, which was seen as a burden from Christendom and an obstacle for the transmission of a purer Gospel message.

Now things appear a little more complex in the relationship between Gospel and culture.

Clearly embracing Christianity instrumentally, for cultural and political reasons, is often a fearful reaction against the diversification of our societies, against the lost dominance of Christianity in favor of the growing presence of other religious identities (especially Islam) in the Western world.

It is not surprising that more and more often these "political" conversions arrive in Europe from the far left or militant secularism.

From a theological point of view, professing an attachment to the culture of Christianity as a defense against other religious and cultural identities is clearly problematic.

The first problem is because a political-cultural Christianity instrumentalises the legacy produced by believers in Jesus Christ (believers in various and always imperfect ways) for goals that are not the ones of the Gospel.

It embraces a particularly narrow view of Christian culture that does not recognise the authority of non-Western Christianities (sometimes with traditions older than the Roman Catholic Church) because they cannot be identified with European Christendom.

Leaving the Christian message in the hands of this kind of "cultural Christianity" entails many consequences and not just in terms of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue and of civil coexistence in our multi-religious societies.

It also prevents a correct interpretation of the Gospel which is not at the service of one particular culture at the exclusion of others.

It is not surprising, therefore, that this new wave of cultural Christianity contains a political theology that both liberal-secular mainstream and progressive Christians clearly do not appreciate because it is a preparation or already part of a civilisational war.

Understanding of "culture"

Two questions arise here.

The first question concerns intellectual and academic work. What are the differences and similarities between this kind of "cultural Christianity" on the right and the radical-progressive political theologies on the left?

Within the Churches in the West, including the Catholic Church, there is another kind of cultural Christianity that risks being similarly opportunistic towards the Gospel.

Important streams in 21st-century political theology around race and gender in academic departments in Anglo-American universities are often a form of cultural attachment to and development of the liberationist turn of Christian thought.

But often without any reference to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the faith perspective, in absence of references to the incarnational-sacramental imagination, ecclesial intentionality, and the graces of the Incarnation and the Resurrection.

This kind of progressive cultural Christianity has been a more welcome guest in academic theology in the West.

It remains to be seen if and how this challenge from "cultural Christians" will impact liberal-progressive theology that operationalizes an understanding of "culture" as a gateway to more diversity, inclusion, and dialogue.

The second question concerns the relationship between faith and culture in today's Church.

It's the symptom of the new semantics of "culture" from something that silently unites in lived experiences to something that becomes a politically militant platform in defense of a lost homogeneity.

But we must pay attention to the intergenerational character of these conversions, which no longer concern only the elderly struggling with nostalgia, but also a certain number of young people.

It's not, as it was in the early post-Vatican II period, an archeological, Agatha Christie-like passion for the splendor of a bygone era. Now it's something different.

Tensions between "the West and the rest"

More crucially, this wave of "cultural Christians" represents one of the tensions between "the West and the rest" during this pontificate.

In ways significantly different from his predecessors, Pope Francis embodies a non-European, "global south" Catholicism that vindicates the need for a process of liberation from Western culture, and a deeper inculturation in local non-Western traditions, in order to be more Catholic.

Conversely, "cultural Christians" in the West are looking for the opposite: a recovery of the cultural legacy of Christianity bestowed in past centuries - philosophy, literature, arts - to preserve some sense of collective self.

This clash of trajectories runs deeper than the usual, lazy, and largely Western "liberal vs. conservative" characterization of what is happening in Catholicism today.

The problem of the relationship between Christianity and culture has re-emerged at this time of disestablishment of the ecclesiastical and theological system created by the Churches in the West over the centuries.

Theologically, Dawkins's "a-Christian Christianity" is the wrong answer to that problem.

But it's also an unconscious way to ask the real question that is on the horizon: what it means, in the globaliesd Church of today, to begin a new phase of inculturation in the West now ex-culturated from Christianity.

• First published in La Croix International
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University and columnist for La Croix International

"There are a number of reasons," Ayaan Hirsi Ali said when she announced her new spiritual direction.

She's been a Muslim, a lapsed Muslim, an atheist and - now - a lapsed atheist. The vacuum left by the vanishing of a spiritual dimension to her life needed filling.

Ali says she came to Christianity both as part of a spiritual journey and as a response to the "nihilistic vacuum" of the modern world.

She could see the reality that writer GK Chesterton put so clearly: "When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything,"

Spiritual journey

Born into the Muslim faith, Ali has long been a prominent critic of Islam. As a young girl in Somalia she suffered female genital mutilation.

In 2002 she renounced her Muslim faith and declared herself an atheist. Since then, she has been a vocal critic of many Muslims' "extremist violence and intolerance".

Her 21-year period as an atheist is now officially over, she says.

She has announced that she now considers herself a member of the Christian religion.

In an essay published on British website UniHerd, Ali wrote that she turned to Christianity in part "because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive."

Why Christianity?

"Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?" she said.

She argued that "the void left by the retreat of the church" in the modern world "has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma."

As for seeking 21st century solutions - she says there is "no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness" to address these present crises: "Christianity has it all."

She also feels a global responsibility too, which influenced her decision to embrace Christianity.

"Western civilization is under threat" from multiple fronts including Russia and China, "global Islamism and woke ideology" her essay says.

"We endeavor to fend off these threats with modern, secular tools: military, economic, diplomatic and technological efforts to defeat, bribe, persuade, appease or surveil.

"And yet...we find ourselves losing ground."

Ask instead - "What is it that unites us?"

Ali says she became a Christian convert because upholding the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only credible answer.

That's because its legacy includes an "elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom and dignity."

Source

• CNA
• unherd.com

Their answer was Harvard University, a school that was established to educate the ministry and adopted the motto "Truth for Christ and the Church." It was named after a pastor, John Harvard, and it would be more than 70 years before the school had a president who was not a clergyman.

Nearly four centuries later, Harvard's organization of chaplains has elected as its next president an atheist named Greg Epstein, who takes on the job this week.

Mr Epstein, 44, author of the book "Good Without God," is a seemingly unusual choice for the role.

He will coordinate the activities of more than 40 university chaplains, who lead the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and other religious communities on campus.

Yet many Harvard students — some raised in families of faith, others never quite certain how to label their religious identities — attest to the influence that Mr Epstein has had on their spiritual lives.

"There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life," said Mr Epstein, who was raised in a Jewish household and has been Harvard's humanist chaplain since 2005, teaching students about the progressive movement that centres people's relationships with one another instead of with God.

To Mr Epstein's fellow campus chaplains, at least, the notion of being led by an atheist is not as counterintuitive as it might sound; his election was unanimous.

"Maybe in a more conservative university climate, there might be a question like ‘What the heck are they doing at Harvard, having a humanist be the president of the chaplains?'" said Margit Hammerstrom, the Christian Science chaplain at Harvard. "But in this environment, it works. Greg is known for wanting to keep lines of communication open between different faiths."

The dozens of students whom Mr Epstein mentors have found a source of meaning in the school's organization of humanists, atheists and agnostics, reflecting a broader trend of young people across the United States who increasingly identify as spiritual but religiously nonaffiliated.

That trend might be especially salient at Harvard; a Harvard Crimson survey of the class of 2019 found that those students were two times more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic than 18-year-olds in the general population.

"Greg's leadership isn't about theology," said Charlotte Nickerson, 20, an electrical engineering student.

"It's about cooperation between people of different faiths and bringing together people who wouldn't normally consider themselves religious."

The Harvard chaplains play an outsize role on campus, touching hundreds of students' lives whether through Mass offered by the Catholic Student Center or Shabbat dinners at Harvard Hillel. Its leader reports directly to the office of the university president.

To Mr Epstein, becoming the organization's head, especially as it gains more recognition from the university, comes as an affirmation of a yearslong effort, started by his predecessor, to teach a campus with traditional religious roots about humanism.

"We don't look to a god for answers," Mr. Epstein said. "We are each other's answers."

It's also one of the most unfashionable virtues going around, at least in the public discourse, as it's rare to see either Christians or non-Christians urging forgiveness.

This is understandable.

In a world full of pain and suffering inflicted by human beings upon other human beings, extending forgiveness to anyone who is seen to have harmed others is hardly a high priority for most people.

Compassion for those who have been wronged is more important than compassion for those doing the wronging.

And we are indeed exhorted regularly to show compassion— for refugees, for the poor, for the disabled, for victims of violence and oppression.

This is no bad thing — the more compassion the better, and if we can make caring for our fellow humans the rule, we will create a better world.

Compassion is easy.

There is no great challenge in opening your heart to those who are suffering, or to anyone you see as an 'ally'.

What is difficult, though, is showing compassion for people who aren't on our side.

Forgiving our enemies, or doers of horrendous deeds. Who can forgive a murderer? Who can feel compassion for a brute?

It's hard, but many would say that's no problem, as there's no point in trying it anyway.

According to one strand of thought — and an eternally popular one — forgiving wrongdoers is a bad idea and will lead to a worse society.

If we forgive, goes this thinking, we excuse, and we fail to send the message that what that person has done is wrong.

Why should we forgive? Because Jesus said so — but I don't believe that, of course.

The reason I believe we should forgive is that it makes us better.

For me, forgiving doesn't mean letting anyone off the hook: criminals can still be punished, people can still be held accountable for words and deeds that hurt other people.

But we can punish and inflict consequences, while still leaving open the possibility of forgiveness. Continue reading

• Ben Pobjie is an Atheist and writer from Melbourne, whose work has appeared in the Age, Crikey, Meanjin, ABC, SBS and others. He is the author of the books Error Australis and Aussie Aussie Aussie.
• Image: SMH

I had missed my bus and ducked into a church to escape a downpour. An hour later, I emerged a convert to going to church, if not to God. Read more

And it only got worse.

When Pope Francis called the reluctant Emanuele up to whisper his question about where his beloved father went after death, I was crying so obviously that the other customers in line at Starbucks looked up from their phones.

I muttered a general apology for the public display but continued to watch the rest of the remarkable footage of Pope Francis going pastoral; a good shepherd holding the littlest lamb close to his heart.

Emanuele wanted to know: Was his dad in heaven even if he was an unbeliever?

Why was I crying?

Why had this short clip of an old man being nice to a little boy touched me and many other people so deeply?

I think it was because Francis showed us how to risk simply embracing the hurting world.

No explaining, just loving.

This is love in action, and it speaks to us as words cannot.

Francis cuts through the distance between pope and child, between believer and unbeliever, and gets to the heart of the matter—human to human.

Francis refuses to be anything other than present to a wounded heart.

When Pope Francis says that "God is the one who says who goes to heaven," he resists placing himself above God or making an idol of our human rules and limited understanding of God.

He chooses to act on what he knows of God rather than to limit God by conjecture about the afterlife.

Yes, it remains true—according to our best guess and carefully thought out tradition, based on Scripture and enshrined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church—that "those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified, live forever with Christ" (No. 1023).

And so this would seem to place Emanuele's father, an unbeliever, outside the possibility of going to heaven.

But "God is the one who says who goes to heaven," not the catechism. Not the pope, not you or me, but God.

Assuring Emanuele that a loving God would accept his father into heaven says more about God than it does about heaven. Continue reading

• Image: Twitter

Francis was visiting a parish on the outskirts of Rome when the child put the question to him.

Francis routinely holds question-and-answer sessions with young people when he visits parishes.

The child (whose name is Emanuele) was in tears when he asked Francis the question.

"If only we could all cry like Emanuele when we have an ache in our hearts like he has," the pope told the children.

"He was crying for his father and had the courage to do it in front of us because in his heart there is love for his father."

After gaining Emanuele's permission, Francis told the other children what Emanuele had said -

"‘A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptised. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?'"

"How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, ‘He was good,'" the pope said.

"And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us.

"If that man was able to make his children like that, then it's true, he was a good man. He was a good man.

That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn't a believer, but he had his children baptised. He had a good heart," Pope Francis said.

"God is the one who says who goes to heaven," the pope explained.

The next step in answering Emanuele's question, he said, would be to think about what God is like and, especially, what kind of heart God has.

"What do you think? A father's heart. God has a dad's heart.

"And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptised his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?"

"Does God abandon his children?" the Pope asked. "Does God abandon his children when they are good?"

The children shouted, "No."

"There, Emanuele, that is the answer," the Pope told Emanuele.

"God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptise your children than to baptise them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much."

Source

• The Catholic Register
• America Magazine
• Image: Aleteia

"Before he died, Stiph [sic] Hawkins [sic] who did not believe in God requested to visit the Vatican. "Now l believe" was the only statement he made after the Holy Father blessed him." Continue reading

Physicist Lawrence Krauss was due to speak on a double-bill with Richard Dawkins at the Science in the Soul tour in May in Auckland and Christchurch, but the promoter has announced he would no longer be on the bill.

Instead, Dawkins would appear at the two Science in the Soul shows alone, with a new co-host to be announced, Australia-based Think Inc. said.

The Auckland University of Technology had pulled its sponsorship of the tour, and New Zealand event management firm Loop had also backed out.

With Krauss' departure, it is unclear whether Loop and AUT would step back in.

Loop declined to comment and AUT has been approached.

Krauss, a professor in the Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, is a director of the Origins Project, a multidisciplinary research effort to tackle questions about life, the universe and complex social problems.

He gained prominence for his book, "The Physics of Star Trek" in 1995.

He later became one of the leaders of the so-called "skeptics" movement that espouses science over religion.

Arizona State University has suspended him while it investigates accusations.

Krauss has published a lengthy response to the allegation which he has called libellous and defamatory.

"While it has gone against every grain of my nature not to immediately speak and write against falsehoods and distortions imposed upon the public, I have been advised by many individuals, wiser and more experienced than I in these matters, to wait until calmer heads, including my own, prevailed."

In his statement Krauss addresses three questions:

• Was BuzzFeed's story accurate?
• Does it accurately portray me?
• Did they do the community a service?

Source

• nzherald.com
• twitter.com
• nytimes.com
• Image: buzzfeeed.com

It discovered people of all faith leanings, including non-believers have a shared distrust of atheists. Only respondents in New Zealand and Finland did not exhibit a clear bias against atheists.

The study was conducted by an international team and published in the Nature Human Behaviour journal. The outcome was based on the responses of more than 3,000 people across 13 countries and five continents.

Participants were asked whether an imagined person, who tortured animals as a child before becoming a teacher and then killing five homeless people, was more likely to be religious or atheist.

The results show people were twice as likely to believe the killer was an atheist.

This suggests "people perceive belief in a god as a sufficient moral buffer to inhibit immoral behavior," the researchers say.

Researchers found these results to be true even in largely secular countries, like Australia, China, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

However, the study reports anti-atheist bias was strongest where there are high numbers of believers, like the United Arab Emirates, United States and India.

"I suspect that this stems from the prevalence of deeply entrenched pro-religious norms," Will Gervais, a psychology professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and one of the co-authors on the study says.

"Even in places that are currently quite overtly secular, people still seem to intuitively hold on to the belief that religion is a moral safeguard."

Source

• Radio NZ
• Huffington Post
• Image: Strange Notions

Br Robert's journey began in Bangalore, India. Originally a Hindu, he became an atheist at the age of 10, and in his late teens considered himself an agnostic.

When he was almost 18 he arrived in Australia and began a science degree at the University of Sydney, hoping to major in physics.

In 2001, about three years into his degree, he decided that mathematics was not his forte. At this time, he also began to suffer from depression.

The philosophical side to this depression was a worry about whether his own life, and judgements, human life and human judgements, and the world in general had any transcendent value at all, or if they were mere "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

It seemed to him that the only alternative was that the world and human beings had value because they were valued by someone not transient - God.

And the only reasonable historical claimant to divine status was Jesus Christ.

He was not mythological but really existed. So he began attending an Anglican Church and was baptised in September 2002.

He now realised that Christ is not merely a figure of history but a person to whom we can reach out.

Around this time, Br Robert encountered some Catholics at Sydney University.

One thing which impressed him was the fact that there were many young Catholics who were happy in living what the Church teaches.

"I was converted through their example and conversations, rather than through their arguments" he said.

Of the latter, one which sticks out was the exasperated comment of the chaplaincy convenor at the time, Robert Haddad: "You're never going to get all the answers to all your objections, and at some stage, you need to make a leap of faith."

It was a throwaway line, but it contains a truth which bothered Br Robert until it ended up convincing him.

He was received into the Church in 2003 and confirmed a year later by then-Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, who had just been ordained a Bishop. Continue reading

• Image: Catholic Weekly

She is the author of Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer. Sargeant recently spoke with the Register about what motivated her conversion and the surprising changes she experienced in her life afterward, including how she learned to pray through the Rosary. The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Tell us a little about your background as an atheist.

My family wasn't religious. And I didn't know anyone who was religious and took it seriously. I grew up in a part of Long Island that was mostly ethnic-secular Jewish. So most people in my high school had bar mitzvahs but didn't really pray or do anything besides the cultural parts of Judaism. So most of my exposure to religion would be things like The700 Club — the kind of religion that makes the news. And it wasn't until I went to college that I knew practicing Christians who were smart, who were comfortable talking about their faith, and who honestly weren't kind of rounded up to the nearest stereotype, i.e., evangelical Americans.

Was there ever a point when you chose to be an atheist or were you always atheist by default?

It was always just more of a default position. I thought religion was false. A lot of the examples of religion I found weren't compelling. And, as I still believe, I don't think that it ever helps people who believe things that aren't really true. I don't think there's any such a thing ultimately as a noble lie that actually helps people in the long term. So when I was interested in other people's religious beliefs, if they weren't true, I wanted to argue them out of it. I have people who are atheists who respond to me that way now. I think that's a compliment to religion to think that way. Because for religion to be something that is completely innocuous — whether you believe it or not, that if you are wrong about it, that's fine — implies that religion has no consequences. That's certainly not how I feel about my faith now that I have one. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• National Catholic Register, article by Register correspondent Stephen Beale, who writes from Providence, Rhode Island.

An Oxford University-led international research study on dying and who fears it most has found atheists are among those least afraid of leaving this life.

Very religious people don't fear dying much either.

However, the researchers found that people who are religious for its social or emotional benefits suffered the most from "death anxiety".

They defined death anxiety as "the persistent fear of one's own demise".

In a paper published in Religion, Brain and Behavior, the researchers discussed their project and its findings.

Their research involved reviewing all the robust, available data from high quality international studies to see if religion, with its promise of afterlife does reduce fear of death.

"Meta-analyses are statistical procedures used to extract and combine the findings of multiple studies.

"This produces a better estimate of the consensus in a field than looking at individual studies," explains Dr Jonathan Jong, a Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology and Research Fellow at Coventry University.

Jong led the international research team, which included members from Otago University.

Source

• PhysOrg
• Daily Mail
• Image: Sepeb.com

Between April and June, 10,000 people left the church - the highest number of registered withdrawals since 2007.

A campaign by the Danish Atheist Society is being held responsible for the number of leavers - double that recorded between January and March.

The campaign's banner advert includes phrases such as "Why believe in a god?", "Why should faith cost something?" and "Did Jesus and Mohammed speak with a god?"

Chairman of the society Anders Stjernholm told Politiken: "We're pleased that Danes have taken the opportunity to express what they actually want. Read more

Christopher Scott Roy, a former head of the art department at Auckland's Tamaki College, took the school to the Employment Court.

This was over a claim he was constructively dismissed because he is an atheist.

His dispute with Tamaki College related to several incidents, including his refusal to attend powhiri because they were "Christian-based events".

Continue reading

She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her academic work focuses on imagination in apologetics, with special attention to the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams; she teaches courses on apologetics, medieval culture and philosophy, and modern and post-modern culture.

Dr. Ordway's book Not God's Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms(Ignatius Press, 2014) describes her journey from atheism to Christianity, and her subsequent entrance into the Catholic Church.

She recently corresponded with Catholic World Report, discussing her life and beliefs as an atheist, her journey toward Christianity, the mistakes made by many Christians in conversing with atheists, and the main reasons why she became Catholic.

CWR: Early in Not God's Type, you state that as a young atheist, you thought that the "decisive argument against faith was that I could not believe, no matter how much I might want to." What sort of understanding of "faith" did you have at that time? How might you respond now to an atheist who expresses a similar notion?

Dr. Ordway: I had the faulty (but common!) idea that faith meant blind faith: that is, believing something without evidence or even contrary to the evidence. Unfortunately, this is a misunderstanding that is propagated by many Christians. As an apologist, I've heard Christians say that they don'twant to know about evidence for the Resurrection or for the existence of God, because that will "diminish their faith." It's no wonder that many atheists conclude that ‘faith' is a synonym for ‘ignorance'.

If having faith really did mean believing something without any grounding for that belief, I would never have been able to do it. I couldn't then, and I can't now: it's simply not possible. It would be wishful thinking or self-deception. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• The Catholic World Report