Wapo’s On Faith asked some folks to make some predictions about what the world’s religions have in store for us next year. Here are some excerpts of their commentary.
Susan Jacoby says:
Why should we expect anything different from religion in 2009? Conservative Muslims will continue to make trouble for secular governments in nations with large Muslim populations. Islamist radicals will launch more terrorist attacks somewhere. In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox will continue to occupy territory they believe God gave them. The Roman Catholic Church will continue to pursue its ludicrous strategy of trying to fight poverty without controlling population and trying to address AIDS through abstinence-only education. In the United States, right-wing evangelicals like Rick Warren will continue to try to conceal their true goals from religious liberals like Barack Obama with a message of bogus “tolerance.” Tolerance for their antedeluvian beliefs, that is. At some point, Obama may realize that the “reaching out” has all been on his side and that he will gain nothing by pandering to these people. One lives in hope.
Cal Thomas says:
In the Middle East — the world’s most volatile place — extremist Islam will continue to fuel the fires of hate, anti-Semitism and division. Palestinian children will continue to be taught that their highest goal in life should be martyrdom and the killing of Jews, Christians and other “infidels.”. Saudi Arabia will continue to fund terrorist organizations and build mosques in Western countries, including the United States, for what purpose it does not take an expert to guess. Much has been written on the “Trojan horse” by experienced and credible witnesses to this strategy.
Deepak Chopra says:
The best that religion can hope for is to live comfortably side by side with secular society. Other than that, 2009 will witness the same decline in status and membership as in previous years, with intermittent increases in the sector of fundamentalism. Now that fundamentalism has become a dreaded word in every troubled part of the globe, the taint of extremism may harm that movement as well.
Rabbi Brad Hirschfeld says:
The easy, self-congratulatory, and incorrect answer would be to blame some wicked cabal of secular elites who have it in for the faithful. The real answer probably has more to do with the gap that has opened up between the ethics, values, and wisdom within religion which most Americans still trust, and those religious institutions which people anticipate will have less influence in what may be emerging as a less ideologically driven culture.
Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite says:
The religious vision that “we” (whoever “we” may be) must destroy in order to save cannot be defeated with military might. The only way the love of death in religion can be overcome is through a more powerful religious vision of world-affirming, peace-performing and justice-making love.
I believe that those are our religious the choices, both nationally and internationally, in 2009.
I am actually less awed by the destructive power of religion than by the power of the vision of hope in the midst of hopelessness, empathy in the midst of war, and above all the power of the vision of peace. That is the “awful” truth of religion in which I most profoundly believe. The “awful truth” is that many people, from many different religions, work every day to build justice, peace and hope.
And Willis E. Elliot makes eight points, number seven of which says:
As America’s children have had decreasing contact with “church” (religious institutions), Americans have decreased literacy in religion and increased belief in their inherent human dignity and independence, with all the alleged “rights” imagined as pertaining thereto. Invited to teach at Esalen Institute in 1968, I found that one of those rights was the right of “the second dessert,” the choice of a bed-partner for the night (now called, in our colleges, “hooking up”). Public-school-produced children are more like marbles in a bag than cells in a body: each marble has its holy “dignity” and sacred “rights.” Why wouldn’t they be enraged at society’s denial of any “right,” such as the so-called “constitutional right to gay marriage”?
What do I say?
Who knows? It sure would be nice if instead of trying to be good Christians or good Buddhists that practitioners would become Christs and Buddhas.
May Awakenings abound, and Happy New Year to all.
