RELIGION

BRUCE FEILER, author, September 18, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: How can religions with such common basic concepts allow so much hatred between each other? I fear too many have lost themselves in arguing the nuances and debating their interpretations of the details of their religions that they have lost sense of the major purposes behind their religions.
FEILER: I think there is a fundamental tension between the stories in the Bible and even the Koran, and how the religions have reinterpreted those stories over time. Take Abraham. In the story, he is a universal figure who passes his blessing to Isaac and to Ishmael and “all the families of the earth” are blessed through him. Over time. For their own reasons of rivalry, each of the three religions tried to override that story, and make Abraham exclusively theirs. Jews made Abraham into a Jew, Christians made him into a Christians, Muslims made him into a Muslim. In many ways, our task today is to rediscover and embrace the original, universal figure who’s described in the story.

CARYLE MURPHY, Washington Post Foreign Correspondent, November 25, 2002
CZIKOWSKY: What degree of religious fanaticism do you see within the rise of Islamic activism? I understand many are taught that Islam is the one true religion. Yet, most teachings not only taught respect of other religions yet found common grounds with Christianity and other religions. Now there are factions being taught that Judaism and Christianity must be destroyed by Muslims. What are the root causes that influence those who teach new generations of Muslims to hate people of other religions? How do we reach the people who have been taught to hate?
MURPHY: Surely, Islam is not the first to teach that it is the “one true religion”. I, as a Roman Catholic, grew up being taught that my faith was the only one! It is only a minority of Muslins who hate people of other faiths. And it is sad to say that the strain of Islam that dominates in Saudi Arabia, which is called Wahhabism, does teach that people of other faiths are not deserving of the same respect of Muslims. But, it is also true that what many Muslims “hate” is U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East.
How to reach people taught to hate? My recipe is increased contact across the board” religious, cultural, tourism, student exchanges, etc.

ARMAND M NICHOLI, JR., Harvard Medical School Clinical Professor, September 22, 2004
CZIKOWSKY: If God is all powerful, why doesn’t He communicate directly with us? I have heard the theological answers about how He does through the beauty of the world and how He speaks through our conscience, etc. What I want to know is: either He chooses not to talk directly to us, or He can’t. If He chooses not to and gives us free will, shouldn’t He expect and accept there will be lots of doubters and definitely lots of people who misunderstood His directions (by sheer numbers, even if one religion is correct, every religions represents a minority of the world population). If He can’t speak directly to us, does that mean that He is not all powerful, or perhaps He is a force unable to communicate and thus possibly is a concept very different from how much humans have determined Him to be?
NICHOLI: Perhaps C.S. Lewis would answer your question by saying that if God spoke to us directly or showed himself to us through performing some miracle, our belief would be based more on coercion rather tHan on faith, an expression of our free will.

THOMAS WOODS, State University of New York History Professor, May 26, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: One of my favorite Groucho Marx stories happened when a priest went up to Groucho and said “I want to thank you for all the happiness you’ve brought into this world” and Groucho replied “and I want to thank you for all the happiness you’ve taken out of this world.” The Catholic Church has long had an image problem. What do you believe the Catholic Church could do to improve how it is received?
WOODS: A great question. Part of the problem is that much of the criticism of the Church—involving the Inquisition, Galileo, and the like—while not entirely without merit, is based on historical work that is frankly outdated. The most recent work on these subjects—Kamen’s book on the Inquisition, for instance—scales them down substantially. That doesn’t make them glorious and wonderful, but it does help us to put things in perspective. My students know all about the Inquisition, which in the entirely of its existence claimed about as many lives as Stalin did on a good afternoon, but they know nothing of the Ukrainian terror-famine, in which an atheistic regime starved five million people to death in 1932-33.
Likewise, everyone thinks the Middle Ages were a time of ignorance and stupidity. No medieval scholar thinks so. But it takes a long, long time sometimes for the conclusions of scholars to reach the general public. In the meantime, the Church’s image suffers.
One way she can improve that image is through education, of course, and my book is a contribution to that project. Another way is to deal much more swiftly and decisively against frankly evil people in the Church. This timidity about the use of ecclesiastical discipline has got to stop. But finally, she can keep doing her good works: we’ll never know all the stories of conversions that occurred in AIDS care centers when the person caring for these dying people was so often a nun, smiling at them and comforting them. There’s nothing evil about that.

JON MEACHAM, Newsweek Managing Editor, July 5, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: Jesus said we would be judged by questions such as: when I was hungry, did you feed me, when I was naked, did you clothe me, when I was in prison, did you care about me? How does the Religious Right reconcile this with their stands on cutting back social programs and increasing prison sentences?
MEACHAM: You make an important point. Intellectual and theological consistency is tragically rare, and many Christians are unwilling to follow the Gospel to its logical conclusion, which is very much as you characterize it. Christians, drawing on an image in Leviticus, are called to love their neighbors as themselves. Another example of a troubling inconsistency among some believes is that many American Protestants do not follow the Roman Catholic teachings on the “culture of life”, which holds that one should be anti-abortion, anti-capital punishment and fight for economic justice. These three positions do not seem to be often held by the same American believer in our current climate.
CZIKOWSKY: Was Winston Churchill very religious? Did he invoke religion much in his political speeches and discussions?
MEACHAM: Churchill was religious but not a churchman. He did indeed use religious imagery in his speeches, using the phrase “Christian civilization” to describe what Britain was fighting for in 1040. He spoke of how American would come to England’s aid “in God’s good time”, and on the night Pearl Harbor was attacked he bade farewell to Franklin Roosevelt during a telephone call with the words “God be with you.” And as an old man he would often say: “Whether you believe or disbelieve, it is a wicked thing to take away Man’s hope.”

BRUCE FEILER, author, September 20, 2005
CZIKOWSKY: I know this is a simple question, with no easy answer, but I ask it: how can so many people with common roots lose track of their roots and become hateful of others? Will a reminder of these roots, as you are providing (in “Where God Was Born”), help?
FEILER: I hear so many people complain: I can’t talk to my brother over Thanksgiving, my neighbor, my colleagues. My belief is that if we go back to the roots of religion it can provide clues for how we might untangle the problems of today. The text is surprising in its relevance: It suggests that when religions formed they were in dialogue with one another, so why not again today? It suggests the Bible promotes diversity and respect. One group of people does not have an exclusive claim to truth.

MICHAEL BAIGENT, religious historian, March 230, 2006
CZIKOWSKY: I am ignorant of the whole issue: I have not read these books (Baigent’s “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, written with Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln and “The Da Vinci Code”) because I know they are fiction. They even claim to be fiction. Even if they were to claim to be true, da Vinci lived long after the time of Christ. So, da Vinci would have no first-hand knowledge on the life of Christ. Nor would the Vatican, as very little was transcribed during the life of Christ. Indeed, there are no surviving records of the life of Jesus from when he lived. All we have are the writing of the disciples and conjecture. My question: what’s the fuss all about if we understand the simple fact that this is all fiction and conjecture?
BAIGENT: There’s an important factor to bring into play here. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that a Jewish messiah was crucified during the Governorship of Pontius Pilate and the reign of the Emperor Tibernius. This is the only external historical evidence which concerns the life of Jesus. The statements by the Jewish historian Josephus cannot be proved to be original because of the Christian theology they express. It is more likely that they are later editions.
Nevertheless, the evidence of Tacitus tells that there is some history in the New Testament documents. And the problem for any historian of the period is to decide where does the history end and the theology start, because the prime reason for the New Testament is to express a theology. And the difficulty is finding the history.
My whole aim with my new book, “The Jesus Papers”, is to take the reader on a journey where we look beneath the later figure of Jesus of Theology and search for the Jesus of History.
CZIKOWSKY: On what documentation do you state that Pontius Pilate helped Jesus survive? Or is this your deduction purely on evidence that Pontius Pilate may have been known to spare people with no direct indication on what he did on Jesus’s case?
BAIGENT: Initially Jesus was operating in a political context. This we can tell because at least some of his disciples were from the zealot political movement, like Simon Zelotes and like Judas Iscariot (from Sicarii-Affection within the zealot movement). The zealot movement began in 6 A.D. with Judas of Galilee who wanted to get rid of the Roman domination of Israel. He was totally opposed to it. He asked people a very simple question but a very important one. And how he answered it could actually put their life at risk. He asked would they pay the tax to Rome. If they said yes, they were seen as an enemy and may well have been killed. If they said no, then they were a friend of the zealots. So this question was a key question in the political context of the times. It was the supremely important question which anybody had to take a position on.
So when Jesus was asked this question in the Temple of Jerusalem it was not just a cute question to which he gave a cute answer. This was a fundamentally important question which he had to treat with great delicacy. And we all know what he said. He said pay the taxes because, as Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world.
So, on the one hand, Jesus broke, utterly, with the zealot movement, members of which would have been outraged, and probably riots were not far away. On the other hand, it gave Pitate the most extraordinarily dilemma because Pilate could not cause the death of Jesus. All Rome required of Pilate was that he keep the peace in Israel and make sure the taxes were paid to Rome.
Here was a Jewish leader who was causing a problem by breaking with his supporters but at the same time supporting the paying of taxes to Rome. Pilate had to make certain, not only that he got Jesus out of the way, but that he survived. And that is the reasoning behind my view of the crucifixion.
My conclusion is that Pilate had no alternative but to arrange for a crucifixion which Jesus could survive because Pilate’s job was on the line.

PAUL BARRETT, author, February 20, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Do recent converts to Islam, especially within the African-American community, integrate well with people born into Islamic culture and who are from or descend from Islamic countries? How well do these various Islamic factions recognize and appreciate the workings of the other factions?
BARRETT: Good question. There’s a lot of tension between African-American and immigrant Muslims. Historically immigrants have viewed Black Muslims as illegitimate, in part because of their association with the Nation of Islam, a group that followed a quasi-Islamic theology mixed with science fiction and racial separatism. But even as many American Blacks have moved away from the NOI, some prejudice has persisted, much to the frustration of African Americans, who resent the bias, for obvious reasons. Economics plays a role, too. Immigrant Muslims, as a group, are very prosperous, well education, and able to operate in mainstream American life. African American Muslims, as a group, are much less well off. This discrepancy generates resentment in both directions. There has been some progress in bridging this gap in some places, but the gap persists.

PETER MANSEAU, author, March 12, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Where there any indications of what the religious transformation was that led a Catholic priest (Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo) to essentially change his religious theological beliefs?
MANSEAU: A good question. The interesting thing about Milingo is that he asserts (and I for the most believe his assertion) that his theology has not changed. Celibacy is a discipline of the Roman Catholic Church; it is not a dogma. Leaving aside the question as to whether the discipline should be changed, it could be changed very easily. The number of exceptions to the rule confirm this. Already certain married men are allowed to be Catholic presents while others are not. For Milingo, marriage did not represent a change of belief but a change of practice. As I explain in the article, the reasons he saw this change of practice necessary are complex and include the influence of members of another church, but after talking to the man, I remain convinced the steadfastness with which he asserts his Catholicism is sincere. He has made statements that cast doubt on this, but on the whole I believe him when he states he has kept the faith.

STEPHEN PROTHERO, Boston University Religion Department Chairman, March 6, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: A third of the nation can’t name who the Vice President is. I believe a majority cannot name their member of Congress. Isn’t the real problem that we’re a nation, not of religious illiteracy, but general knowledge illiterates? I suspect half the nation would think it’s safe to deep fry a turkey if given the chance to do so.
PROTHERO: There are problems of course with historical illiteracy and scientific illiteracy and etc. And some of these illiteracies have serious consequences. But the consequences of religious illiteracy are in my very particular grave. That’s because religion is one of the most powerful constituents of culture—it moves people to kill and to make peace, to work for justice and to punish “evildoers”. In short, religion matters. So it makes sense to attack this sort of illiteracy with particular force.

BEN BRADLEE, Washington Post Vice President at Large, and SALLY QUINN. Washington Post On-Faith Co-moderator, May 22, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: What are your thought on the various similar messages, from “the secret” of the transcendental meditation advocates? Is there a component of various religious and philosophical beliefs that helps such that, if one can positively think of a goal, they are much more apt to achieve it? Is there too much negativity in how people think such that a fundamental shift in how people think that may actually help people see the goals that improve their lives?
BRADLEE: I do believe in the power of positive thinking. I’m an optimist. I don’t know any other way to live.
QUINN: I think some of this stuff about positive thinking can get a little hokey and it can also set people up for even greater disappointment. But I have always felt that if I set my mind to something then I will work harder at achieving it. So positive thinking is not a miracle answer to everything but it can help you set goals and work toward them.

MICHELLE BOORSTEIN, Washington Post Staff Writer, December 10, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: I find it interesting that some advocates of public prayer state they would not extend the right of public prayer to the Wicca religion, and some refuse to recognize the Adventists. If you allow prayer, doesn’t the real question often then become who gets excluded? BOORSTEIN: As the head of the Virginia ACLU said-they don’t police prayers. So the result is this patchwork, where people all over the country seem to be living under different rules. This is one reason some would like the Supreme Court to revisit this issue and clarify it, for the thousands of local bodies across the nation. It seems to me from Federal court rulings that communities that allow Christian prayers but not other religious invocations (so far as I know no one bans completely unreligious—i.e. atheist—pre-meeting welcomes) will not be able to survive long in that regard. The question is whether the legal issues about legislative prayer extend to other areas where religion and government get close, such as how much can a public student talk about his/her religion in a classroom before it becomes coercive, since other students have to listen (say, in a presentation, or a graduation speech)? At what times in the public school day can they distribute literature for Bible study? What sort of religious garb can a public school teacher wear, as they stand as a representative of the municipality? At a conference about religious expression and teaching religion in public schools, I saw something surprising: Richard Land (of the Southern Baptist Convention) took the position that a public school teacher should NOT be allowed to wear a crucifix, while a representative of a separatist group argued the opposite! Land said he felt students could be too young to understand the difference between the teacher as an individual and the teacher as a representative of the city or county. This debate goes far, far beyond legislative prayer.

JAMES KUGEL, author, December 18, 2007
CZIKOWSKY: Words have different meanings to different readers. “Get the to a nunnery” could mean one wishes one to go to a convent and study the Bible, or it could mean to go to a house of prostitution. What are some of the major differences in phrases and words in the Bible whose meanings have changed the most through these thousands of years?
KUGEL: I think I mentioned in the book (“How to Read the Bible”) that the word “nefesh” in Hebrew used to always be translated as “soul”. But now we know that it had another meaning, “neck” or “throat” (and hence “appetite”). So when the Israelites say in the Pentatuech “our souls are fed up with this manna”, they probably mean something more concrete about their throats or appetites, and when the Psalmist cries out that the waters have risen “unto soul”, it now seems he really meant that he was close to drowning.
CZIKOWSKY: Aren’t there parts of the New Testament that translate vastly differently depending on the times they are read? For instance, weren’t only the more wealthy citizens counted for the census to be taxed, so Joseph and Mary were more likely prominent members of their community rather than of more humble roots?
KUGEL: I don’t think that’s a translation question, strictly speaking; it’s more a matter of trying to understand the social and political background of the texts. By the way, I didn’t talk much about New Testament scholarship in my book, but it’s quite amazing how much more today’s scholars understand about the New Testament—not only the social background I just mentioned, but how the text came into its present form, what the meaning underlying different Greek phrases might be (some of them imitations of Aramaic phrases), and so on.
CZIKOWSKY: As you mention how meanings of words have changed over the years, isn’t there also a change in the meaning of expressions? The expression of having a camel going through a needle did not mean getting a large animal through a smaller sized object but the difficulty of getting to camel to move through a portion of the desert where traveling is difficult.
KUGEL: You should talk to a New Testament expert about this; what I remember is about fifty years old, and things may have changed by now. But scholars used to have two different explanations (at least that I know of), both of which sound fairly plausible (but I’m not sure if the evidence exists to back them up). One was that “eye of a needle” was an expression sued for a particularly narrow archway in the city. The other was that “camel” here is short for a twine or thick, wool-like thread made out of camel’s hair. In the first case, I guess the meaning would be: tight squeeze, but definitely possible; in the second, pretty much impossible. But if either of correct, this would in any case mean that an image that’s hard to understand as in the New Testament has become a lot more comprehensible. In my case, I’d certainly recommend checking with a very recent commentary and see what they say.

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, former Delegate to the U.S. Congress, April 7. 2008
CZIKOWSKY: You are a minister, Rev. Martin Luther King was a minister, and I wish to ask your perspective, and what you believe would have been Dr. King’s perspective, to the religious groups that claim that the issues closest to the religious communities are lowering taxes, preventing abortion, and preventing gay marriage?
FAUNTROY: Dr. King’s position here would have been that, since all Muslims, all Christians, and all Jews maintain that Abraham is the Father of their faith, that Moses was the Law Giver who did not give Ten “Suggestions” but Ten Commandments. So called spiritual leaders should not tolerate their faithful using religion as an excuse to deny income, education, health care, housing, and justice to other groups of people. The problem with religion today is that too many of our religious leaders talk East and walk East on the basic tenets of our respective faith traditions and allow our faith to be used by the greed in society to take from the needy by pushing wedge issues like those referenced in your question that divert attention from the basic issues of income, education, health care, housing, and justice, the “domestic tranquility” among all in a “civil society”.

DONALD WUERL, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., April 11, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: I notice there are often more photographs of the previous Pope, indeed many stores offer more remembrances of Pope John Paul II than of Pope Benedict. Is this a reflection of we continue to mourn a great Pope, or is this also be design and Pope Benedict has, so far, been deliberately keeping a relatively low profile?
ARCHBISHOP WUERL: Perhaps one explanation for the fewer number of photos pf Poe Benedict XVI, in contrast to Pope John Paul II, is because our Holy Father Pope Benedict has only bee Pope for three years. Pope John Paul was Pope for nearly 27 years. I still have photos of his first visit to the United States—photos that I cherish—even though I also have photos of his visit to World Youth Day in Denver, to Camden Yards in Baltimore, and from his visit to St. Louis in 1999. My collection of photos of Pope Benedict is just beginning to grow,

LEE ANN KINKADE, Wiccan, October 31, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: Are there Wiccans who attend services of other religions, or are most Wiccans purely Wiccan in their devotion? I ask because I wonder if there is any cross-identification among Wiccans, or maybe not. That’s why I ask.
KINKADE: I cringe at the thought of the reaction I would get if I presumed to speak for most Wiccans. But I like your question. One of the fun things about pantheism is that I cross-identify on any given Thursday. The above isn’t true for all Witches I know but I really think they are missing some of the fun.
CZIKOWSKY: Is the Samhain ritual something sacred, i.e. this is a commandment that shall be performed, or do you see it more as something that is good for bolstering the spirits of the participants? What do you view as the reasons why it is performed?
KINKADE: We’re not big on commandments from where I’m from.
I see bolstering the spirits of the participants as a sacred act. It seems to be one that crosses a lot of cultural barriers and is one of the functions of most holidays, including Samhain.
I practice ritual because doing so allows me to move through the world in a way that’s meaningful---something I suspect is common with those participants in other religious ceremonies.

LAWRENCE FORD, shaman,and LAURA BLUMENFELD, Washington Post Magazine Staff Writer, December 8, 2008
CZIKOWSKY: How similar or different are the beliefs of a shaman from the beliefs of the gurus who pray for communities, or priests or nuns who pray for others, or the fact that people pray themselves, or believes that positive energies can cause improvements around them? Do you see some similar connections in each of these beliefs?
FORD: ALL ONE :)
CZIKOWSKY: Earlier today I was discussing John Lennon, whose anniversary of his death is tomorrow, and how the Broadway play “Lennon” came out at the wrong time, following September 11, when New York audiences were not as open to themes of interconnectedness and peace. They play had several different people races and sexes portray Lennon throughout the play, which also was a little quirky for audiences. Yet, that was the point of Lennon: we are all connected. We are all Lennon, we are all each other. We all shine on. I noted similar themes in this article and thought I would pass this along.
BLUMENFELD: Super! I agree. The Shaman of Wall Street would make a great musical. Dancing brokers! Singing stock analysts!