Posts for category ‘Sightings’

In the scientific community, there has been a significant increase in “sightings” of articles and studies on the “science” of religion.  Various points of view, and occasionally overt agendas, emerge from the research. If a Templeton-like foundation is funding the study, for instance, the perspective seems to be a test of the hypothesis:  God is up there, and we will prove it to you (at least insofar as measured by statistically significant outcomes), with the following randomized, double blind clinical trial.  Several years ago there appeared “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit”.  The study showed that “prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care”.  However, the critical reader was also warned that there were several limitations to the study.  One problem was that there was no way to determine whether others might have been praying for the control group, those not supposed to be the beneficiaries of intercessory prayer.  Another problem was that the main result of the study was a rather meager “10 percent improvement” in the short term cardiac health for those in the group for whom prayer was offered, as measured by a score that was “an estimate of the overall CCU (cardiac care unit) course”.

One wonders what God was thinking while deciding how to weigh in on this exercise.  If I sound cynical, it’s because clinical randomized trials are notoriously expensive and difficult, and yet can be very influential in the definition and direction of clinical practice.  I am both a Christian and a clinical scientist/neurosurgeon who silently prays before and sometimes during surgery.  I’m also struggling to obtain funding for a clinical trial of a brain tumor vaccine to supplement the inadequate therapies we presently have.  I’m not suggesting that studies of religion’s intersections with science shouldn’t be done or are not important, but attempting to put God on the witness stand, demanding an accounting, and then suggesting that something has been learned, is, in my opinion, wasteful of resources that might better be employed elsewhere.

A different type of scientific analysis appeared recently in the widely read journal Science:  “The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality”.  Religious prosociality is “the idea that religions facilitate acts that benefit others at a personal cost”.  In this review and synthesis of nearly fifty articles, we learn that there is “an association between self reports of religiosity and prosociality” but that the association “emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened”.  Further, behavioral studies searching for a “good Samaritan” effect in an anonymous encounter experiment document that “unobtrusively recorded offers of help showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context”.  It is telling from the article that only one variable produced a change in the behavior of study participants:  “Whether participants were told to rush or take their time – produced differences in helping rates”.  We may have learned something there:  religious variables aside, we all respond to the rush of modern life and sometimes lose our sensitivity to be an empathic and caring community – all of us.

That “active members of modern secular organizations are at least as likely to report donating to charity as active members of religious ones” should not be a surprise.  For what and for whom this information might be useful is open to question.  Clearly, more generosity is needed from all of us.  The authors suggest that more research is needed to “establish the specific conditions under which costly religious commitment could evolve as a stable individual strategy and whether these models need to take into account intergroup competition”.  They also suggest that “the extent to which religion is implicated in human cooperation, and the precise sequence of evolutionary developments in religious prosociality” are important questions. These research interests might well be interesting for the fields of theology, psychology and sociology among others, and as the authors note, “This is an area of no small debate, but scientific attention is needed to examine precisely how individuals and groups determine who are the beneficiaries of religious prosociality and who its victims.”  On the other hand, after reading samples of research on the nature of religious experience, examining the design of experiments and techniques used to probe these complex questions, one wonders, what do we really learn?  The concern of scientists that “the same mechanisms involved in ingroup altruism may facilitate outgroup antagonism” may just as well apply to the scientific community as the religious.

Douglas Anderson is a  neurological surgeon and associate professor of neurological surgery at Loyola University Medical Center.

Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Long-time subscribers know that Monday Sightings does not “do” U.S. Presidents or presidential candidates, but this twilight moment after an election and before an inauguration provides me with another category, “President-Elect,” which today’s column will notice for an important reason.  That reason?  The approach to religion-and-politics proposed by President-Elect Obama in his “Call to Renewal” address on May 28, 2006.  I may print it out and use my new Christmas-gift magnets to affix it to a refrigerator door as a text for morning meditations. Here is an excerpt:

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.  Democracy requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.  I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will.  I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all…Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality.  It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible.  At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise.  It’s the art of the impossible.  If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences.  To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

Now, contrast this with a message posted by the Reverend Pastor Richard Duane Warren, with whom I have no motive to pick a fight.  But I wish he would engage in dialogue with his friend, the President-elect, before and after Inauguration Day.  Warren:

“As church leaders, we know our congregations are not allowed to endorse specific candidates, and it’s important for us to recognize that there can be multiple opinions among Bible-believing Christians when it comes to debatable issues such as the economy, social programs, Social Security, and the war in Iraq.  But for those of us who accept the Bible as God’s Word and know that God has a unique, sovereign purpose for every life, I believe there are five issues that are non-negotiable.  To me, they’re not even debatable because God’s Word is clear on these issues.”

These have to do with abortion, stem-cell harvesting, homosexual “marriage,” human cloning, and euthanasia.  He chose these five, about which the printed Bible displays only a few inches of text that can even be used as inferences to support them, as “non-negotiable” themes. He shelves as negotiable the multiple yards of printed biblical texts on some social issues which to him seem negotiable.  With the President-Elect I affirm that Pastor Warren’s “uncompromising commitments may be sublime,” but I do see that “to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

We Bible-believing Christians are offended when some Muslims base social and political policy on the Qur’an, or ruling parties in India, on texts from their holy books, since we do not accept such texts as “God’s Word.”  What Pastor Warren and millions in his camp advocate works only in a theocracy, where the whole population accepts or is forced to accept one faith’s “God’s Word.”  I really, really would like to eavesdrop if the President-Elect and the Pastor were to converse about this question.

Reference:Read Obama’s “Call to Renewal” address at http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal

“From a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God,” the biweekly glossy World (November 15/22) asks at almost issue-length what went wrong with the Republicans in the recent elections.  To the editors’ credit, they do not spend much space in a blame game on what went wrong because of Democrats and liberals, but instead in self-examination of Republican faults.  Decades ago wags said that the Episcopal Church was “the Republican Party at prayer,” but in elections in our time it has been said that “inerrant Word of God” factions tended to find Republicans to be inerrant.  No more.  Let’s look at World.

Up front, founder Joel Belz reflected that the “trouncing at the polls was thorough, painful, and unambiguous,” a confirmation that “the conservative coalition…has all but disappeared.”  In 2000 and 2004 “razor-thin victories prompted us to think we had more clout than was ever really ours,” so “we” acquired the habit of brash pretense.  Question: Should we take lessons on being a confirmed minority from “our Jewish friends” (see the seventh verse of Deuteronomy 7, Belz suggests: “the Lord loves you…”)?  “Wouldn’t it be a good thing to humble ourselves—” and not wait for a new political cycle?

At the back, editor Marvin Olasky looks ahead with “plans to rebuild…an alliance between evangelicals and fiscal conservatives by emphasizing three C’s—community, civil society, and compassion—that would bring back into the fold young evangelicals…”  Promote community with efforts “to limit government through expansions of the voluntary, nonprofit organizations that make up civil society.”  Then:  “[Governor] Palin…is a natural to run with [the] understanding” of compassion “in opposition to the greed she and others have decried.”  So, “Bottom line: Once, the business of America was business.”  Government more recently became our god, “but it failed.”  A new understanding is beginning to appear: “Do not fear.”

Contributors include Princeton‘s Robert George, who says it is a “daft and dangerous idea” to retreat from politics.  Rebuild, emphasizing opposition to “abortion and embryo destructive research.”  Dayton‘s Larry Schweikert, on the other hand, says “some of the conservative Christians” will have to subordinate the issue of abortion for a while, and work to “bring us together” to oppose “wealth redistribution,” which is “fundamentally unscriptural and unbiblical.” Wendy Wright wants to keep fighting for “every pro-life protection.”  Senator Rick Santorum blames many among “principled conservatism and Christian conservatism for having “lost our way on some things.”  “We got wrapped up in the idea that government can solve problems…”

Public relations expert Mark DeMoss accuses his side of looking at things “completely black and white,” and of failing to back values-candidates with money.  “We stand up” for candidates who support our values, “but we don’t give them money.”  Pastor Tony Evans accuses fellow conservatives of having “often been too disconnected from where people really are, and that showed up in the economic crisis.”

The only cheering vote, to publishers of World, was Joe the Plumber’s victory over Brad Pitt, as three “marriage-protection initiatives” won in three states.  Writer Lynn Vincent credited a new coalition, including evangelicals, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and many Christian denominations, and hoped that such a cluster could “impact the culture with Judeo-Christian principles.”  Inerrantly.  Will the programs of these notables rally straying or young evangelicals and heir kin?  Wait and see.