As measured in surveys, Americans' negative attitudes toward political parties other than their own have increased dramatically in recent decades and at a much faster pace than in other countries.

These entrenched divisions simultaneously increase the vehemence of our arguments and decrease our willingness to listen to one another.

We exhaust ourselves by declaring our opinions but are not in conversation.

We produce monologues that are intended more to reassure us than to convince those with different views—or worse, that are received by them as taunts and provocations which must be answered in turn.

Constant exposure to arguments that we are not willing or able to engage with in dialogue is draining as well.

It is like listening to a radio tuned to a station that is half static, half shouting—but that we dare not turn off lest we miss the point our own monologue will aim to refute later.

When we think about polarisation in terms of its derangement of public discourse, we often think first of political partisanship.

But it is clear that this dynamic also plays out in many realms of common life, including religion. In the Catholic Church, it is easy to recognize polarisation operating both within the life of the church itself and in the church's relation to the secular world.

For example, conflicts over the Traditional Latin Mass and over how the church should engage with a wider culture whose sexual norms have changed radically both reflect different factions arguing fervently but often talking past each other.

Indeed, what most characterizes polarisation is the constant sense of threat: Everything is always at stake, always in need of defence.

In fact, a closer look at the relationship between religion and secularity provides powerful insights about how polarisation arises and how it becomes so intractable—and it also helps us imagine how to find a way toward greater unity.

The reality of the church as a communion, not just an association of individuals, offers a powerful antidote to polarisation.

Finding resources within the church's tradition for a healthier engagement across internal divisions can also provide a model for responding to secular forms of polarisation.

Where polarisation and secularity intersect

Polarisation is not simply an intense form of extremism but not just the worst case of division or disagreement.

The kind of polarisation that is exhausting us is, instead, a pathology endemic to pluralism.

It is a name for how attempts to live together with others who hold different accounts of meaning, goodness and human nature—accounts that overlap and intersect but do not fully agree—break down and turn into fear and scapegoating instead.

Our arguments about how to live together run in circles.

As we despair of ever convincing each other, the "other side" in a polarized discourse becomes less a partner in conversation and more a threat to be neutralized.

Indeed, what most characterizes polarisation is the constant sense of threat: Everything is always at stake, always in need of defense.

Because we lack shared ground on which to agree or disagree, we also feel the lack of safe ground for our own beliefs.

This is the ugly and dangerous truth of why the outrage machines of social media and the 24-hour news cycle work so well on us.

We are already afraid—and they are ready at hand to tell us why.

Believers or not, we all live in a secular age in which we become responsible for opting to believe.

In thinking through how polarisation operates, I have found that the philosopher Charles Taylor's analysis in A Secular Age offers crucial insights into how the stakes of disagreement have risen so high in our contemporary situation.

(While I would encourage everyone interested in these issues to read A Secular Age themselves, a 900-page tome is a very good reason to make a recommendation of a shorter précis as well. James K. A. Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is an excellent exploration of the key points of Taylor's work.)

Two main points from Taylor have bearing on the question of polarisation: his distinction between three different meanings of secular and his concept of being "cross-pressured" by having to constantly choose among many sources of ultimate meaning. Continue reading

• Sam Sawyer is Editor in Chief of America Media

But already a replacement is waiting in the wings if the presbytery decides to "dissolve" the 130-year-old congregation and sell the church property. Read more

Hart won a four-year legal battle and was able to pick up the long-awaited "Im God" licence plate and place it on the back of his Jeep. Read more

The research will be led by Dr John Shaver, University of Otago's Religion programme head, with Otago Research Fellow Dr Joseph Watts, who will conduct fieldwork in The Gambia.

The study will examine the impact of globalisation on practical support available to mothers and how this support impacts women's fertility and their children's health and development.

The Templeton Foundation notes that despite scholarly projections of the demise of religion, religious groups in many parts of the world are growing.

A great deal of this growth can be attributed to the higher fertility of religious people compared to their secular counterparts.

An unexplained paradox

Studies of diverse human populations demonstrate that parents in modern societies sacrifice the number of children they have for quality of children.

Even though children born to large families are expected to suffer physiological, psychological and social obstacles to flourishing, children born into religious communities appear buffered from the detrimental effects of high fertility.

Currently, this paradox of religious fertility is unexplained.

Shaver said preliminary work in New Zealand suggests co-operation in faith-based communities extends to childcare.

"What we don't know yet is whether shared childcare among co-religionists may help to mitigate the costs of high fertility, positively affecting both fertility and child health."

Over the next 30 months, a team of seven anthropologists and demographers will conduct cross-cultural studies of 6,050 Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim participants in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, The Gambia and the United States.

In addition to Otago University, the project involves researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Connecticut.

The John Templeton Foundation supports independent research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution and emergence to creativity, forgiveness and free will.

Source

• templeton.org
• voxy.co.nz
• odt.co.nz
• Image: ecovis.com

But the number of churches overall is falling too, just not as fast. Read more

Among those who use some form of blessing, 13 pray, 26 say a karakia, 19 use a mix of both or another blessing and 18 don't use anything.

Massey University's Professor Peter Lineham, whose research specialises in New Zealand's religious history, said most councils which prayed had done so "for a very long time."

"Gradually, it has been eliminated from most of the larger councils. The moment anybody protests about it, effectively it comes to an end."

The new trend was using a karakia which was generally considered acceptable, whereas a European Christian prayer may not be, he said.

"Within officialdom, there is a real change of attitudes, where effectively Maori karakia have come to replace the traditional 'this is a Christian country but with no commitment to any specific denomination'."

Chief legal adviser at the Human Rights Commission, Janet Anderson-Bidois, said a karakia could be either secular or religious.

"While karakia, blessings or prayers should never be compulsory, some public institutions have introduced elements of tikanga Maori as part of their acknowledgement of biculturalism under the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, or say a prayer as a continuation of long-held traditions."

Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) president Dave Cull said councils were free to open meetings as they chose.

"Many councils use the LGNZ standing orders template, which states that local authorities may choose to recognise the civic importance of an occasion through some form of reflection."

This could be an expression of community values, a reminder of the contribution of the members who have gone before, or a formal welcome such as a mihi whakatau, Cull said.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

Justice Robert Dobson recently overruled the council's decision to allow Easter Sunday trading following a High Court judicial hearing last month. Continue reading

They are:

• Existential security (you have enough money and food)
• Personal freedom (you're free to choose whether to believe or not)
• Pluralism (you have a welcoming attitude to diversity)
• Education (you've got some training in the sciences and humanities).

If even one of these factors is absent, the whole secularization process slows down. Read more

"It's a very strange sample because it inconsiderably includes less than our population percentages of Maori and Pacifika, and that may have actually impacted on the result - in that those two groups, particularly the Pacific group, tend to record much higher levels of religious beliefs and activities," he said.

According to the study, which surveyed more than 1000 New Zealanders, about 33 percent identify with Christianity, 35 percent were non-religious, 20 percent spiritual but not religious, and 67 percent were non-Christians.

Morris said more people were finding fulfilment in other spiritual practices without the need to be part of a religion.

"The work we've done with our students at Victoria show that large numbers of students who record no religion - in terms of a census category and were reflected in this survey - meditate, pray and [have] very strong ecological concerns, which they see as spiritual but not religious.

"My students are very open to Maori spirituality, te hunga wairua and at playing a role in individual and New Zealand's public life."

He said various forms of media have also helped shape New Zealand's views on different religions.

"People also have - through media, social media and mainstream media - much more awareness of the positive and negative things of religions, but just a variety of religious and spiritual positions.

"So, in that sense, they're conscious of a set of choices and a cultural openness where none of these things are coercive.

"They're choices. You can select to be religious or not religious."

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• Image:nzfaithandbeliefstudy.files.wordpress.com

While the Queen is back in the new version to be read ahead of Question Time next week, references to Jesus Christ are still on the chopping block. Continue reading

"Here's the interesting thing," writes Narelle Henson, "a group called simply "Protestants" by Statistics New Zealand grew by 26.4 percent from the previous census in 2006."

A group called "Evangelical, Born Again and Fundamental" grew by 11.2 percent.

In a recent interview on RNZ, Graeme Morris from Victoria University said he was fascinated by the fact that the Catholic Church's size as a percentage of the population has remained consistent from the late nineteenth century through to the present day.

Morris suggested three reasons for this phenomenon:

• The inter-linking between the Catholic religion and Irish culture
• The effectiveness of the Catholic education system
• The arrival of immigrants from countries where the Catholic Church is very strong.

He went on to say it is not all good news for the Catholic religion because, in terms of percentages, it is "treading water". It's not growing in terms of the size of the percentage of our population.

On the other hand, as Henson points out in her opinion piece, the evangelical religions are growing.

This growth was the topic for another recently published article, Am I at a rock concert or religious gathering?

The trend has caught the eye of experts around the world because it bucks the secularisation theory made popular in the 1950s which predicted that, in modern, educated societies, devout belief would not survive.

Henson says that the same trend appears to be happening in America.

According to the Pew Research Centre, traditional religion is in sharp decline.

But Chosen Religion (based on conversion) seems to be growing, in countries both modern and modernising.

And secularism's growth is flattening out.

Source

• Waikato Times
• RNZ
• Image: New Zealand Geographic

Responding suggestions some villagers have made for a village by-law stating that everyone living in villages should attend church every Sunday Permanent Secretary for iTaukei Affairs Naipote Katonitabua says no one can be forced to attend church services.

He told Fijivillage that according to the 2013 Constitution, people have the right to attend or not to attend church services.

The constitution states that there is freedom of religion but no one should be forced to follow a particular religion.

Issues have also been raised on what happens to the villagers who are Seventh Day Adventists as their sabbath falls on Saturdays.

Katonitabua says that the leaders of families within the Tokatoka and the Mataqali should know what Sundays meant to their forefathers.

He says they received many reports during the village by‑law consultations of villagers not attending church.

Katonitabua says over time people have come up with new ways of life that badly affected the church attendance on Sundays.

However he says while there are rights to worship our own religion, there are also limitations which are needed to respect the vanua.

He says the whole purpose of the Village By-Law Consultation is to bring back the respect that villages had before.

Katonitabua says the villagers are now well involved on village activities and particularly looking at the welfare and the well-being of the village.

He says there is a great amount of support from the elders of the village in terms of safeguarding tradition and culture.

Source

• fijivillage.com
• fijivillage.com
• Image: shaylamartin.com

In an interview with ZENIT, the cardinal-designate expresses his belief that Christians must "accept wholeheartedly the culture in which we are to accomplish our mission: a pluralistic culture, a secularized society."

"This culture is also an opportunity," he says, because it enables one to "discover the freedom of the faith."

ZENIT: Your Eminence, did you expect this nomination?

Cardinal-designate De Kesel: I didn't expect it at all. I was at Monaco for the meeting of Presidents of the European Episcopal Conferences. It was the end, Sunday after Mass. I was already on the bus to go to the airport and all of a sudden bishops came to see me to congratulate me. I didn't know anything. I didn't even know that the Pope had the intention to publish the names. I couldn't believe it, I never even thought of it …

ZENIT: How do you see this new mission?

Cardinal-designate De Kesel: The "creation" will take place on November 19. I will see what is expected of me at Rome. Perhaps I must become a Consultor in a Congregation, but for the moment I don't know anything. This nomination is a sign of confidence on the part of the Holy See, not only for me but also for our Church in Belgium, which is living certain difficulties, confronted with a secularized culture.

ZENIT: What are your wishes as Archbishop for your diocese?

Cardinal-designate De Kesel: My wish here is to revitalize the Church somewhat. I think that we must accept wholeheartedly the culture in which we have to accomplish our mission: a pluralistic society, a secularized society. It is a profound conviction in me. This culture is also an opportunity, a grace for the Church. In fact, previously Christians were led by society itself.

This is no longer the case, but this new situation enables one to discover the freedom of the faith. As a pastor, I wish to encourage our Christian communities; I do not want to hold an anti-modern discourse. It's our society; it's in this society that we are called to accomplish our mission. We want a living Church open to the world, and a Church that is solidaristic, even if it's smaller than previously.

The joys, the pains and the anxieties of the men of today are also the joys, the pains and the anxieties of the disciples of Christ. I wish for a Church that accepts the culture in which she lives and that is open to the world, while remaining faithful to the treasure she has received from the Lord in the Gospel. Continue reading

Sources

• Zenit
• Image: Le Soir

They have spent the past decade converting what was St John's Presbyterian Church in Cromwell into a home.

Respect for the former users of the building and those who worked so hard to construct and maintain it underlines the sympathetic makeover. Continue reading

The former St James Presbyterian church near the Wellington Hospital has been completely rebuilt to accommodate five new apartments.

The 176 square-metre penthouse, the last apartment in the development to be sold, has retained all the character features of the historic 1880s church, including a massive 4.5m stud, vaulted timber ceilings and a dramatic rose window.

And it comes with spectacular 360 degree views from the tower room at the top.

Real Estate Agent Pano Focas says he wouldn't even want to hazard a guess as to what the penthouse might fetch.

The other five apartments in the former church "blew away sales records for the area" last month, and there were 10 tenders for each property.

"The interest was huge," he says.

"I have never been so run off my feet in 12 years in real estate."

Focas says he cannot reveal the selling prices until after settlement, but says they "exceeded expectations".

He said the project was a "labour of love" for developer Sheryl-Maree Gulliver, who has a background in the restoration of historic buildings and was passionate about maintaining the quality of the build.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

"A common sign of this secularization is the emergence of social, political, and economical spheres in which religious influence is declining."

Boniface says the Papua New Guinea constitution has two pints of reference: ‘our noble traditions' and ‘the Christian principles'.

"The question is what happened to those noble traditions and the Christian principles since the time when European culture and civilization met the people of PNG?"

He says when a culture/civilization meets another culture/civilization changes will take place and there is the danger that the dominated society gets disorientated because of all the changes; that it loses its bearings.

Source

• wantokniuspepa.com
• Image: materialworldblog.com

From Southland to Northland, Trade Me is listing more than 20 as-is-where-is churches or completed residential conversions, and real estate agents say interest is high.

Offerings range from a $150,000 original 1926 stone church near Oamaru to a $4.8m South Auckland warehouse used by the charismatic Faith City congregation. Continue reading

Rasik Ranchord, spokesperson on public issues for New Life Churches International, has sent out an email asking church leaders to get their members to write to members of parliament urging them to retain the present prayer.

On 17 November the Speaker, David Carter, sent a letter to all members of Parliament regarding two options for the prayer that is read at the commencement of each day's parliamentary business.

MPs have been told the choice is between the existing prayer, which is 70 words long, and the 82 word proposed alternative.

No amendments will be allowed.

He has asked for their feedback by Friday 5 December 2014.

The second version is in Maori and English.

Ranchord says the English section in this version "is a 'cut and paste' version of the present prayer".

He says the following segments have been omitted:

• and of our country to the glory of Thy name
• the maintenance of true religion
• through Jesus Christ our Lord

Contentiousness surrounding the parliamentary prayer is not new.

The present parliamentary prayer was adopted in 1962 and it was last reviewed in 2007.

At the first sitting of the NZ House of Representatives on 26 May 1854 religious differences between Protestant and Catholic were deftly handled by Speaker Clifford (Catholic himself) in bringing the local Anglican clergyman in to do the honours.

Those who drafted the New Zealand constitution were emphatic that it should guarantee strict equality for all.

A South Island Scot, James Macandrew, moved that the first act of the House of Representatives should be a public acknowledgment of the divine being and a supplication for his favour on its future labours.

Seconded by a Scot from Nelson, this was at once challenged by a Roman Catholic from Auckland, who protested against converting the House into a conventicle.

An Aucklander said that he too felt deeply grateful to providence for having brought him to New Zealand, but as members were of various denominations, he would not care to see a clergyman of any particular sect brought in to say prayer.

James Edward Fitzgerald, the supreme constitutionalist, held that the very appearance of a state religion should be avoided.

With that in view, when the Canterbury Provincial Council was about to meet, the Church of England members attended service in their own parish church.

At this stage, Mr Weld, who later became Sir Frederick Weld, Premier, begged that nothing should be done to impair the perfect religious equality of members.

Mr Weld was an English born Roman Catholic. His amendment affirming the principle of religious equality was lost by 20 to 10

Macandrew's motion was carried. Prayers were read by the Reverend F.J. Lloyd, Church of England, who it was said to be the first clergyman to be found.

The House then saw no harm in giving the assurance Weld had asked.

Later it was agreed that the Speaker would say the prayer

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• prayeratparliament.org.nz
• nzhistory.net.nz
• Image: yournzfiles.wordpress.com

Some of those theories assumed, in the light of the changing role of the major Christian churches in certain European countries, the gradual decline or even rapid extinction of religion throughout the world.

Others did not go that far, and simply maintained that religion had shifted out of the public into the private sphere.

Either way, the assumption was that the process was irreversible.

When religion made a global comeback on the political stage over the last three decades, many were shocked.

Religion appeared to them like Samson, once blinded and chained, a laughing stock, shorn of all its strength, and yet here it stood, revived, a frenzied titan threatening the pillars of our houses and the survival of all.

It is now evident that the de-privatisation and re-politicisation of religion is a truly global phenomenon, and does not only concern the monotheistic religions.

"Religious terrorism" and "fundamentalism" are its most obvious, but by no means sole, expressions.

We can find religious symbols and active religious groups nowadays across the political spectrum - from the extreme right to the extreme left; from fighters for civil liberties, human rights and social justice to supporters of authoritarian regimes; from ecological activists to extreme nationalists; from the United States and Latin America to the new states of African; from the Balkans to the Arab countries, from Israel to India or Japan.

The fundamental assumption of the theory of secularisation - that what had been happening in Europe for some time would necessarily have to happen throughout the world - is now regarded as erroneous, especially by sociologists and analysts of globalisation, who view it as one of the many prejudices of an arrogant and naive Eurocentrism.

Religion has proven to be a more vital and multifarious phenomenon than it was viewed by the Enlightenment, positivism or Marxism. Continue reading

Source and Image

• ABC Religion and Ethics

CWR: Why did you set out to write this book—what initially triggered your thinking on secularization in the West?

Eberstadt: Like other Americans who've travelled to Europe, I've been impressed repeatedly by how secular and non-Christian and sometimes anti-Christian the Continent has become. Empty pews and sparsely attended Masses; cathedrals that house far more tourists than pilgrims; elderly altar-servers in childless churches: these are just a few snapshots of what some call the ongoing de-Christianization of Europe.

The question of why this dramatic decline has happened seemed worth some time and thought, so I started looking into it. And the first interesting fact to emerge was that the standard ways of explaining secularization don't hold up, as the opening chapters of the book go to show.

Affluence alone doesn't drive out God, for example, and neither does education or rationalism or other purported causal factors that don't hold up upon inspection. The very phenomenon of secularization came to feel more and more like a great and intriguing jigsaw puzzle. How the West Really Lost God is an attempt to re-arrange the pieces into a better fit. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: A Voice for Freedom Radio