Religion quiz

So how much do you know about religion? Take the quiz from the Pew Forum on Religous and Public Life - and find out!

At the end, you will see how your score compares with others and how those of various faiths, gender or educaton performed. 

The two questions that stumped most responders: Which preacher participated in the period of religous activity known as the First Great Awakening?  and According to the rulings by the US Supreme Court, is a public school teacher permitted to lead a class in prayer or not? Only 11 and 23 percent, respectively, responded to the two questions correctly.

Power

During the US presidential debate, in addressing questions on the Middle East, President Barack Obama mentioned three times that religious minorities must be protected. Understanding the nuances in the region is essential. Sometimes minorities abuse power over majority populations, as is the case in Syria. Sometimes majorities abuse power over minority populations.

"Understanding the sects and their tensions is crucial in crafting any foreign policy for the region," I wrote for The Washington Post's On Faith blog. 

Tolerance of others' beliefs,  provides security. Extending respect for those not in power provides security. As James Madison noted, "In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority." He also warned that tyranny and oppression arrive in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Good advice for any country.

The power that comes with example, culture, trade, education, diplomacy and more, can influence more than military power. Sadly, one of the great resources of the US State Department, its Background Notes and Country Profiles, are no more. What a loss ...

Examining the State Department's notes on percentages of Shia and Sunnis in the region - 35 percent Sunni and 62 percent Shia in Iraq; 9 percent Sunni and 89 percent Shia in Iran - along with a glance at a map, makes one wonder what the Bush administration was thinking when it decided to invade Iraq in March 2003. 

Map courtesy of Google.

Clash

The posters in the New York Subway stations represent:
a. Clash of civilizations.
b. Clash in religions.
c. Clash of speech.
d. Or, all of the above.

Activist Mona Eltahawy was arrested for spray-painting over posters suggesting that Muslims are uncivilized. "Eltahawy was arrested after a supporter of Geller's initiative attempted to prevent her defacing the sign with a purple aerosol," reports Peter Beaumont for the Guardian. 

Eltahawy defended her action as "free speech," too. But then she didn't pay $6000 in advertising costs for posters in 10 subway stations. In New York City, paid advertising carries more weight than activism.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative, which commissioned the posters, and Eltahawy are receiving far more publicity and attention than either paid for.

As a side note, The Color Purple is one of my favorite books about literacy.

Update, September 30: Eltahawy is on UP With Chris Hayes, and she describes the spray paint as pink - not black, so people could still read the poster. Chris asked her, why she responded to the trolls? She responded, that she felt compelled to respond to the bullies. Still like purple, not changing the art. Readers have asked who is the artist. Answer: 2-minute Paint creation.

Fighting for faith

My mother, Jeanne Marie Froetschel, was my role model for approaching other religions and respecting others' beliefs.

I remembered her wisdom this morning and wrote about her for On Faith blog of The Washington Post, after reading about about ads suggesting that the beliefs of 1 billion Muslims might not be civilized:

"Early in first grade, one of the nuns advised our class not to associate with children who attended other schools and believed other religions. My teacher, a younger nun, looked uncomfortable and quickly changed the topic.

"Later that day, I asked my mother about playing with friends who worshipped at other churches.

"'Playing with other friends won’t change your beliefs,' my mother said. She was beautiful, devout and confident that her children knew right from wrong at an early age."

The ads are immature. The competition is unseemly. Great religions, great thoughts, do not have to advertise or insult the beliefs of others. Religious leaders shouldn't limit what adherents read or whom they associate with. Committing violence against nonbelievers does not convince others that a set of religious beliefs is worthy. 

The guest blog concludes, "Ruthless, mean competition for adherents and power, insults and violence, give reason to Americans to distance themselves from religion and explore spirituality alone or among a diverse and comfortable group of friends."

Photo of Jeanne Marie Froetschel
 

Exclusion

Exclusion goes hand in hand with religions and fraternities.

Excellent analysis from Sophie Gould of Yale Daily News: "Though Yale’s newest fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX) has announced a policy of admitting only Christians, it will have to change its membership rules if it intends to comply with Yale’s anti-discrimination policies."

But rush week isn't first-come, first-serve. It's about discrimination. 

Photo of Harkness Tower on High Street, nestled between Saybrook and Branford residential colleges, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

Connected

Protests in Cairo over a film trailer, The Innocence of Muslims, originally called Desert Warriors, represent but a fraction of Egyptians, the vast majority who continue to go about their daily lives. Journalist Ethar El-Katatney provided perspective this morning on UP with Chris Hayes. Protests were reported in 23 nations, each fueled by varying sources of anger, the foolish anti-Muslim film serving as an excuse in many cases.

The protests are scattered and fragmented.

On the other hand, the vast majority of people in the United States, the third most populous country in the world, are puzzled, not prepared to fear and resent 1 billion Muslims.

Likewise, most Americans are not ready to dispense with freedom of expression. It may be difficult for other cultures to reconcile, but  most Americans both support peaceful protests that blast the US in Egypt and Libya and Yemen and beyond, as well as a mean, self-centered, biased filmmaker's right to make a film and, as writer Oscar Wilde once said, make an ass out of himself. Violence is wrong, freedom of expression is open to all. The nation's first president, George Washington, said in a speech to officers in 1783, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

Protesters can walk on the US flag, and this makes Americans stronger.


Photo courtesy of Mohamed CJ and Wikimedia Commons.

Victim of irresponsibility

US Ambassador Chris Stevens worked his entire career to better lives and improve connections between other cultures and the United States, most recently in Libya as it undergoes transition from dictatorship, civil war and efforts for representative government.

He and at least three other Americans were killed today while fleeing the American consulate in Benghazi.

Protests flared this week after a television cleric in Egypt found an amateur video denigrating Mohammed - a video without humor or merit, one that otherwise would have attracted attention. He showed clips over the weekend and reposted them on YouTube. Rumors flared that the clips were part of a major Hollywood film to open on September 11. Tempers flared.

The film was irresponsible.
Showing the film on television was irresponsible.
The protests that turned violent were irresponsible....

Legitimate concerns

"[W]women, particularly the most vulnerable, have difficulty abandoning religion. They’re less likely to become nonbelievers, because the church, mosque, synagogue and other religious communities promise security that their families might not provide." And so I wrote as a guest for the Washington Post's "In Faith" blog. The blog addresses views on faith and their impact on the news.

The essay is intended as a gentle warning for religious leaders who resist women's interpretations, participation or concerns, and I conclude, "Religions need women more than women need religion." Women are among the most devout in many faiths, and their numbers are currently low among the growing number who count themselves as nonbelievers, agnostics or theists who choose not to practice. But that could change quickly in an era of globalization as alternatives become quickly apparent to all.

One commenter noted that religion was not behind the comment.

I admit to being torn. The vast majority of US Catholic women use contraceptives, and yet the church defies those members and goes as far as to try and impose its restrictions on non-members. Many politicians rely on their religious beliefs for guidance in making policy, and some would deny abortions to rape victims and the women's perceptions of these crimes.

But I also agree that religion can't be blamed, that individual interpretations are also responsible. Religion is a guide to thinking about the world. As a guide, it's a tool, like the internet or the pen, and as I've written before, like conversations or globalization. Any tool can be used by individuals for good or other purposes.

Unfortunately too many religions don't offer an even playing field for their female adherents. And some religions don't let women on the field at all.

Photo of uneven playing field, courtesy of Jorchr and Wikimedia Commons.

A simple request

Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, writes the first essay in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theology:

"The type of world in which women flourish is one where women have political, social, and religious power to participate fully in decision-making processes; where women’s bodies are valued, respected, and protected from demeaning forms of exploitation, abuse, and violence; where women’s labor, particularly the care they provide to children, the elderly, and the sick, is shared by all and honored as economically and socially valuable work; where the natural environment is engaged with respect; where education is open to all; and where the basic material resources that it takes for communities to be healthy and thrive are ensured. This view of flourishing also includes celebrating forms of beauty that women cherish and spiritual practices that women treasure, both of which point to the fact that flourishing involves not just the absence of oppression and injustice but also the positive presence of things that make women happy and fulfilled."

Jones suggests that daily action rather than dogma is required: “changing society requires both changing laws and practices and challenging the categories and process we use to think about life and to make sense of our world." 

She points out that "the dynamics of globalization are creating a world culture in which we often share more than we might expect….”  

Photos of western and eastern hemispheres of earth are courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons

Courage

"A Vatican investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group representing 80 percent of Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States, found serious theological errors in statements by members, widespread dissent on the church’s teaching on sexuality and “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” a church report released Wednesday stated." So reports Elizabeth Tenety for the Washington Post.
The brave words of Catholic sisters are guided by reason and their consciences. Faith is unsustainable if it cannot endure such independent and sincere questions and tests.

The sisters are far more courageous and determined than women such as myself. Disgusted by child-abuse scandals of the early 1990s and the church's irrational arguments and response - blaming the media and the messenger - I abandoned the Catholic Church. If they were so irrational on one point, how could they not be wrong on so many others? I did not need such men to supervise my spirituality. No women or child does.

 "Like everything else in the United States, religion must compete under the free-market system. In this country, we have the privilege of free thought and speech, and we can decide which 'moral' rules imposed by religious leaders, mere mortals, should be kept and which are meant to be broken," I wrote for the Hartford Courant, March 24, 2002, in an essay titled "The Church Must Change." Not many traces of that 2002 opinion essay remain online.

I admire the nuns and would consider attending a church run by nuns.

Image courtesy of From Eternity to Here.