There are still some spots open for the women's retreat I'm leading on spiritual practice on March 9 and 10. We'll be drawing from Marjorie Thompson's excellent book Soul Feast (which you do not have to read beforehand) and trying our hands at a few spiritual disciplines. We'll also be relaxing and enjoying the peace and tranquility of the Transfiguration Spirituality Center just north of Cincinnati.

Most of the women will be Episcopalian, but if you had to be Episcopalian to attend, why then they wouldn't have invited me to lead it, now would they?  ;-) So don't let that be an obstacle.

Here is a brief description, and a link to registration.

Looking to broaden your understanding of the spiritual life? Join us on March 9 & 10 for the WOMEN'S RETREAT "Taste and See: A Feast of Spiritual Practices." In this retreat, Jana Riess, PhD - member of Redeemer's Adult Formation Ministry Team and author of Flunking Sainthood - will lead us in a "tasting menu" of several spiritual practices, including lectio divina, fixed-hour prayer, and Sabbath-keeping. Whether you are a regular practitioner of these disciplines or it's your first time, we'll explore together how such practices can help us grow closer to God. (Marjorie Thompson's book Soul Feast will be a resource.) The retreat will be held in the BethAnna house at the Transfiguration Spirituality Center. You may register on the Redeemer website or by phoning the church office (513-321-6700). Please make sure that your registration is received by the deadline date - February 28. The cost is $70 and includes private room, three meals, and program. 

The Pilgrim Chapel at Dallas Baptist University. The Southern Baptist Convention decided against a name change, and marketing experts agree changing a brand identity is often easier said than done. RNS photo courtesy Reagan Rothenberger/Wikimedia Commons.

Maybe, but as the advertising executives of Madison Avenue here could attest, as tempting as it is to try to solve a missionary slump with a marketing campaign, religious groups -- like commercial businesses -- should think twice before undergoing a brand overhaul.

After months of deliberations, an SBC task force on Feb. 20 recommended against trying to re-brand the denomination, an idea that has been bandied about for more than a century.

Proponents of a change made a good case: for a denomination that was born in 1845 out of a defense of slavery, the name has since saddled Southern Baptists with a problematic name and historical baggage.

Advocates -- including top SBC leaders -- argued that the name of the nation's largest Protestant body wasn't helping reverse a decline in baptisms and church plantings. One reason, they said, was the "Southern" part of their name made it hard to expand beyond its largely white base in the Bible Belt, and racial and ethnic minorities often balk when they see the Southern Baptist name.

"There is so much to celebrate in the heritage of our beloved denomination, but there is also a deep stain that is associated with slavery," R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote as the debate heated up.

"If these issues can be resolved, even to any significant degree, by a name change, a Gospel-minded people would never hesitate to consider such a proposal."

There were also strong currents running against a change, however. Some objections were rooted in an emotional loyalty to tradition and culture that can make a debate over repainting the church walls into an occasion for schism.

"We believe that the equity that we have in the name Southern Baptist Convention is valuable," said Jimmy Draper, head of the SBC task force. "It is a strong name that identifies who we are in theology, morality and ethics, compassion, ministry and mission in the world. It is a name that is recognized globally in these areas."

Makeovers are not only expensive and fraught with potential legal problems -- factors that were raised by the SBC task force -- but they may not work. Exhibit A: Coca-Cola's failed 1985 effort to introduce "New Coke," or Tropicana's updated but deeply unpopular package design for its orange juice, or Gap's swift rejection of a poorly received new logo.

"Brands that play against consumer behavior always lose," said Josh Feldmeth, head of the New York office of Interbrand, an international brand consultancy business.

Even so, religious groups won't stop trying if they feel their "brand" isn't working.

Campus Crusade for Christ, the worldwide ministry started in 1951 by the late Bill Bright and his wife, is this year introducing a new moniker, "Cru," that some worry could become the "New Coke" of evangelical Christianity.   

Elsewhere, evangelical leader Tony Campolo has taken to calling himself a "Red Letter Christian" because he worries that the evangelical brand has become too politicized. The rock-ribbed Christians at Bob Jones University in South Carolina have been looking -- so far in vain -- for an alternative to the "fundamentalist" label that they once wore so proudly.

Mormon leaders are also making a push to have the church called only by its formal name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because they feel the "Mormon" label can be derogatory or raise undesirable associations with polygamist splinter groups.

But Feldmeth, who was raised an evangelical and graduated from Wheaton College, said LDS leaders might want to think twice.

The word "Mormon," like "Southern Baptist," has strong name recognition and immediately conveys a clear image -- both valuable assets. If that image is not the one you want to project -- for example, a LifeWay Research survey showed that 40 percent of Americans have a negative impression of Southern Baptists -- then you have to figure out why rather than just slapping a new label on the same old product.

"I think you should stick to your mission and just work harder to explain why your mission matters," said Feldmeth, who is now a practicing member of the Episcopal Church, which was forced to re-brand after the Revolutionary War made associations with Anglicanism dicey.

"Brands exist to change behavior. That applies to the religious world as much as it does to the business world," he said. "You create a McDonald's to change the way people eat."

It's also not easy to find a good alternative. "Mormon" is memorable and short, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a mouthful. The "American Baptist" name was taken in 1950 by the Baptists' northern branch, and black Baptists snagged the "National Baptist" brand way back in 1895. For what it's worth, "Primitive Baptist" and "Hard Shell Baptist" are taken, too.

Clint Henry, pastor of Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, baptizes a new member at Eagle Island State Park. The Southern Baptist Convention decided against an official name change. RNS photo courtesy Baptist Press.

In the end, all the Southern Baptist task force could do was offer an unofficial alternative, "Great Commission Baptists," for congregations that want at least something a little different.

It seems unlikely the "GCB" moniker will win out, but an evolutionary approach to re-branding can work; International Business Machines effectively reinvented itself as IBM, and General Electric did the same by switching to GE.

If all else fails, Southern Baptists and Mormons can take heart from historical precedent. The early followers of Jesus were disparagingly referred to as "little Christs" -- hence the term Christians, a brand few churches are eager to give up.

Likewise, the name "Lutheran" was first used to mock the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, who didn't much like the term either. But it stuck, and worked. In that same period, members of the new Catholic Counter-Reformation order, the Society of Jesus, were dismissively referred to as "Jesuits," yet that brand has had some staying power.

And in the 18th century, followers of John and Charles Wesley were derided for their "methodical" approach to spiritual growth -- but thanks to those cultured despisers, we now have Methodists.

"In the end," said Feldmeth, "they made the brand what they wanted it to be."

A man prays at the Islamic Cultural Center in Newark, which was included on a surveillance list by the New York Police Department to monitor Muslims' businesses, mosques and community centers. RNS photo by Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger.

NEWARK, N.J. (RNS) The report was stamped top secret.

Inside was a confidential dossier compiled by the New York Police Department documenting "locations of concern" in Newark -- the city's 44 mosques, Muslim-owned restaurants and businesses and Islamic schools.

In 2007, the NYPD began an undercover spy operation within New Jersey's largest city to find and document where Muslims lived, worked and prayed.

Now, city officials and many of those targeted are voicing anger at the disclosures, which came in the wake of an Associated Press report showing that a secret NYPD surveillance program aimed at Muslims had extended well beyond New York City.

"I have deep concerns and I am very disturbed that this might have been surveillance that was based on no more than religious affiliation," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said.

Booker said he had been unaware of the undercover work and the Newark Police Department -- which had been contacted by the NYPD early on -- had not been involved in any joint operations.

"What we are discovering appears to be an NYPD operation in our city that involved the blanket surveillance of Newark residents and workers based solely on the religion of those individuals," he said. "If this is indeed what transpired, it is, I believe, a clear infringement on the core liberties of our citizenry."

Separately, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey immediately demanded a further investigation by the state attorney general, calling it a "violation of the public trust."

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the NYPD has been methodically compiling data on the region's Muslim populations, infiltrating mosques and student groups, and building profiles of local ethnic groups.

But new reports on the extent of that surveillance operation revealed the NYPD had been operating well outside its jurisdiction, cataloging Muslim communities on Long Island and New Jersey, and monitoring Muslim college students across the region.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has strongly defended his department.

"The police department goes where there are allegations. And they look to see whether those allegations are true," he told reporters on Tuesday (Feb. 21). "That's what you'd expect them to do. That's what you'd want them to do. Remind yourself when you turn out the light tonight."

In Newark, the NYPD apparently cataloged every mosque and Muslim-owned business in the city -- from fried-chicken joints to houses of worship located in private homes.

There was no mention of terrorism or any criminal wrongdoing in the 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, which described the aim of the surveillance as compiling "the existence of population centers and business districts of communities of interest."

Most of the properties listed in the NYPD report were Islamic cultural centers, restaurants and stores where members of Newark's Muslim community went to pray, eat or shop.

The report carries the tone of a dispassionate tour guide. A page on Newark Fried Chicken said the restaurant was owned and operated by Afghans. "Location is in good location and has seating capacity for 10 to 15 customers," the report said.

An entry for Masjid Fallahee labeled it a private house where 25 to 30 worshippers of Nigerian and West African ethnicities had been seen in prayer.

Inside the Islamic Cultural Center, Abdul Khabir called the NYPD investigation "unfortunate" but said it did not bother him because he had nothing to hide. "We just want to serve Allah," Khabir said.

At the Dollar Deal store on Broad Street, 25-year-old Watas Ali struggled to understand why his business was involved in a police probe.

"They separate us from other businesses just because we're Muslim?" he asked. "It's unfair."

Abu Muhmad, a senior administrator at the Masjid Rahmah, a mosque on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, said reports of surveillance are not a revelation to him. He said FBI agents had been coming to the mosque for years.

"We know for a fact agents are out there listening to what is being said at prayers," particularly on Fridays, when hundreds come to pray at the mosque, he said.

But, like several who came for prayers yesterday, Muhmad said mosque leaders accepted the scrutiny as a sign of the times, however unfortunate.

"We understand the situation," he said.

One member of the mosque, however, Abdur Rahman, called the surveillance effort offensive. "It's crazy," Rahman said as the mosque's amplified call to prayer sounded outside. "It's a form of stereotyping. It's stupid."

City Councilman Anibal Ramos Jr. labeled the disclosures shocking.

"Newark is a town that's made up of folks from all over the world," he said. "Every resident has a right to have their privacy protected," he said. "Unless they're targeted for a specific investigation, then I don't understand."

(David Giambusso and James Queally write for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. Staff writers Richard Khavkine and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.)

In a 100-minute debate with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on Thursday (Feb. 23), Richard Dawkins surprised his online and theater audiences by conceding a personal chink of doubt about his conviction that there is no such thing as a creator.

But, to the amusement of the archbishop and others, the evolutionary biologist swiftly added that he was "6.9 out of seven" certain of his long-standing atheist beliefs.

Replying to moderator Anthony Kenny, a noted English philosopher, Dawkins said, "I think the probability of a supernatural creator existing (is) very, very low."

Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion" and other best-sellers, is a leader of the "New Atheist" movement that aggressively challenges belief in God and criticizes harm done in the name of religion.

"What I can't understand is why you can't see (that life started from nothing and) is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God," Dawkins told Williams, according to The Daily Telegraph account.

The archbishop, who heads both the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, replied that he "entirely agreed" with the "beauty" part of Dawkins' statement -- but said "I'm not talking about God as an extra who you can shoehorn onto that."

"This revision can be seen as a part of our efforts to be real with our students who are young adults. "

Jean-Noel Thompson, Abilene Christian University's vice president for student life and dean of students, explaining its new dance policy that permits some dancing at school-sponsored events. He was quoted by the Abilene Reporter-News.

Andy Uhl, a stone carver at the Washington National Cathedral, checks the contours of a limestone finial that will replace one severely damaged in the Aug. 23 earthquake. RNS photo by Annalisa Musarra.

Now, six months after the 5.8-magnitude quake, the cathedral is facing repair costs of at least $20 million, and a reconstruction timeline that could stretch out a decade or more.

The bill to fix the iconic church is now at least $5 million more than original estimates, said church officials, who are still working to stabilize the building, repair its intricate stonework and raise money to continue the restoration.

So far, donations for repairs have reached $2 million, or 10 percent of the predicted cost.

"We can only do as much work as we have funding to do," said cathedral spokesman Richard Weinberg. "If all the money is raised immediately, this is a five-year project. But that's a big 'if.' It certainly could take up to 10 years."

The reconstruction effort involves both massive cranes and hand-held chisels, and the kind of expertise that's not found on a typical construction site. The quake toppled a grand pinnacle from the cathedral's central tower. Finials, at the tops of the pinnacles, rained to the ground. Flying buttresses cracked.

Donations have come from more than 3,500 people across the country for the cathedral, the sixth-largest in the world and the mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

But the cathedral is also dubbed a "House of Prayer for All People," and serves as official as a church can be in a nation that separates church and state.

Scaffolding now crowns the central tower of Washington National Cathedral, which was heavily damaged by a rare East Coast earthquake in August 2012. RNS photo by Annalisa Musarra

Weinberg said the cathedral is "cautiously optimistic" that goodwill from within and without the denomination will sustain restoration efforts, which are headquartered in a shop on the cathedral's grounds that looks as if it could be a garage for a hefty pickup truck, but nothing bigger.

There, two stone carvers employ techniques that are largely unchanged from those used by the craftsmen of the great European cathedrals of centuries ago. On a recent weekday, Andy Uhl, who has been carving stone for 25 years, chiseled grooves into a microwave-sized block of Indiana limestone.

Guided by Uhl's hand, the chisel is powered by compressed air. But when it comes to shaping the contours of an angel's nose, or a gargoyle's ear, he and colleague Sean Callahan reach for an old-fashioned chisel and mallet.

Callahan, with a mask over his mouth and plugs in his ears, works surrounded by chipped and pocked finials, all victims of the earthquake. Some of them include a few that he worked on a quarter century ago as an apprentice.

When the quake hit on Aug. 23, Callahan was in the shop, and thought he was having some sort of inner ear problem when the earth began to move beneath his feet. As one of the first people atop the towers after the earthquake, he said the extent of the damage astounded him.

"It's a lot worse up here than it looks on the ground," he remembered thinking.

The cathedral and the Washington Monument -- the two highest points in the capital city -- suffered the most damage when the quake struck. Tourists could suddenly hear the cathedral's bells ringing as the building swayed.

Church officials and police evacuated the cathedral, found no injured employees or visitors, and began assessing the damage. There is no insurance to cover the damage.

Since then, the church has reviewed its insurance policies, Weinberg said, but made no changes to cover earthquakes. The deductible and premiums to insure a cathedral are prohibitively high, he added, and damaging earthquakes in Washington, D.C., are rare.

The fundraising drive began almost immediately, and an early $25,000 gift from the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington helped draw attention to the cause. Soon after, a crane used for the repairs toppled over on the cathedral grounds, injuring no one seriously, but scuttling plans for a televised concert with President Obama to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Within weeks, tourists returned to the cathedral and services resumed. Today, scaffolding crowns the central tower and the interior nave is draped in black netting to protect visitors from loose mortar. The cathedral's challenges are mostly unseen as it tries to remind its admirers that it needs money.

In the years leading up to the quake, the cathedral battled budget problems and suffered through several rounds of layoffs. Since the earthquake, donors have contributed $5 million for cathedral operations and ministries, but the church says it needs $5 million more to support its annual programs.

"We have a very long way to go," said the Rev. Francis H. Wade, the cathedral's interim dean.  "But this humbling generosity has allowed us to stabilize our building and return to our mission of serving as the spiritual home of the nation."

Since it's Friday, let's just get to the good stuff: Following the news that a proxy Mormon baptism had been performed (again) for Anne Frank, a new website allows users to perform their own proxy baptisms for dead Mormons -- this time turning them gay. Note from the site: "Holocaust victims are not eligible for conversion."

In more disturbing baptism news, a toddler in church-run daycare reportedly drowned in a church baptismal pool in Indiana that was filled with two feet of standing water.

As Maryland is poised to become the eighth state to legalize same-sex unions, Rick Santorum says he does not support civil unions, either. "Marriage cannot be defined differently from one state to another," he said. Um, it already is.

Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, who prays regularly with POTUS, criticized the "silly season" of Republicans questioning the president's faith.

Black atheists say coming out of the unbeliever's closet can be a double whammy.

Southern Baptists have released a partial list of suggestions that didn't make the cut as they were mulling a name change, including BUBBA, the "Baptist Ultimate Bible Believing Alliance."

Seven states (Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas) and two Catholic groups filed suit in federal court over President Obama's mandate for insurers to provide contraception coverage to all employees. Religion Clause has the full text of the suit if you are so inclined.

The conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is finding (rare) common cause with the Catholic Church on the contraception mandate.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown is invoking the late Ted Kennedy (even though he famously ran against "the Kennedy seat" in the U.S. Senate) in saying, "Like Ted Kennedy before me, I support a conscience exemption in health care for Catholics and other people of faith."

The White House says it "stands in solidarity" with Iranian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani amid reports that his death sentence has been reinstituted because he refuses to renounces his Christian faith.

A New York lawmaker is standing with newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan after the Empire State Building refused to honor Dolan's elevation by lighting its spire in cardinatial red.

After a pile of burned Qurans were found at a U.S. air base in Afghanistan, Newt Gingrich blasted Obama for apologizing for the act of religious desecration. Gingrich said POTUS "is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States, period."

Time to break out the ice skates in hell: Reports in Rome say Fidel Castro will rejoin the Catholic Church when B16 visits the officially atheist island nation next month.

Speaking of famous Cuban (American)s and religion, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Catholic and sometimes Baptist, was baptized into the Mormon Church as a boy before later returning to the Catholic Church.

And finally, with the full caveat that this has little or nothing to do with religion (but it's our blog and we'll post if want to), hats off to Sweden's future queen, Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, born yesterday in Stockholm.

Kevin "I wish I was Swedish royalty" Eckstrom

(photo via Gapersblock.com)

Need help thinking your way through the religious liberty and health care policy thicket? Yesterday, the Brookings Institution released a useful guide, "Health care Providers' Consciences and Patients' Needs: The Quest for Balance," by two of its thoughtful policy wonks, William A. Galston and Melissa Rogers. The report ends with a set of "suggestions for policymakers," the last of which is particularly worth pondering:

[A]lways look for ways of including competing principles and divergent interests. Policymaking takes place on the level of symbolism and emotion as well as of calculation and impact.  Totally denying the claims of one party and legislating based entirely on the core arguments of the other sends a powerful message: your moral perceptions don’t count, and your core interests don’t matter. That is rarely the formula for productive and sustainable policymaking in a diverse democracy.

Whatever the faults of the Obama administration in handling the conctraception coverage mandate, it cannot be accused of totally denying the moral claims of the other side. But the same cannot be said for the other side. I have seen nothing from congressional opponents by way of an acknowledgement of the moral claim that women are entitled to contraception services as part of their health insurance.

And this asymmetry extends to the advocates. In the pro-contraception community, the Obama accommodation has been largely embraced as a way of reconciling the competing principles. But the paladins of religious liberty have largely rejected it. In some cases, they've rejected it because they reject the very idea of acknowledging diverse moral perceptions. Here, for example, is Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete (h/t Michael Sean Winters):

Obama is, I think, the new man being created by modern American secularism, a kind of nihilism which doesn't throw away Bibles, but welcomes many interpretations of it and of other "sacred books" in order to enrich the cultural panorama with a diversity that serves as a bulwark against absolutist claims.

Actually, this is a view of many of the Catholics in Obama's intellectual circles who know no other way but to split faith from public life, abandoning the former to the realm of subjective opinion or moralistic fundamentalism, and the latter to the dictatorship of relativism.

What the monsignor sees as a nihilistic dictatorship of relativism the Brookings fellows consider a formula for productive and sustainable policymaking in a diverse democracy. That's the real nature of the culture war we're in.

The George Washington Prize was founded in the last decade to honor the best books in American history dealing with the founding period (roughly from 1760 to 1820). Every year there are three nominees, and one of them takes home a $50,000 prize when the winner is announced at Mount Vernon in June. Yowza.

Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?  was published a year ago this week to great critical praise from historians, who have appreciated its balanced approach. The book has no axe to grind in the ongoing debates about the religious hopes of America's founders.

It has sold well too, hitting that sweet spot that publishers love -- a book that is accessible enough for undergraduate course adoption or lay group study, but also substantive enough that it can hold its own against the best work by other historians of America's revolutionary and republican periods.

All -- and I mean all -- of the past nominees have been books from major trade houses (Penguin, Random House, Viking, Knopf, Simon & Schuster, Holt, etc.) or the largest university presses (Oxford, Harvard). Westminster John Knox is the smallest press to ever have a book nominated, and the only religious press. We are so honored to have an author in this august company. Here is some info about the award and its very prestigious past winners:

Created in 2005, the George Washington Book Prize was presented that year to Ron Chernow for Alexander Hamilton. Other winners are Stacy Schiff (2006) for A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Charles Rappleye (2007) for Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution, Marcus Rediker (2008) for The Slave Ship: A Human History, and Annette Gordon-Reed (2009) for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which also won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the National Book Award and the Frederick Douglass Prize. In 2010, the Prize was awarded to Richard Beeman for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. The George Washington Book Prize recognizes the year's best books on the nation's founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance broad public understanding of American history.

Can I just say that I am absolutely thrilled? The book is outstanding and the author is exactly the kind of person you want nice things to happen to more often in life. Congratulations to John Fea! My thanks to him as well for bringing this wonderful project to WJK. 

Earlier this month the the Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, told the U.S. House that he will "stand with our friends in the Catholic Church'' in opposition to a recent government ruling on contraception. Photo courtesy of U.S. House of Representatives.

Earlier this month the the Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, told the U.S. House that he will "stand with our friends in the Catholic Church'' in opposition to a recent government ruling on contraception.

“If there are threats or leads to follow, then the NYPD’s job is to do it. The law is pretty clear about what’s the requirement, and I think they follow the law….We don’t stop to think about the religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there.”   [emphasis added]
  

The award winning investigation by the Association Press contradicted the Mayor’s claims, stating that there had been “no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior. It was a guide to Newark’s Muslims.” 
In other words, pace the Mayor, the NYPD was not only thinking about religion, religion was the category that the NYPD used in profiling the Muslim students. 

On Tuesday, during Mayor Bloomberg’s appearance at the Brooklyn Public Library, some reporters pressed the Mayor on whether it is appropriate to profile American students who are Muslim, to count the number of times they pray, to watch the restaurants they eat in, and even accompany them on a rafting trip.   Might such profiling have gone too far?   “No,” said the mayor:   

“We have to keep this country safe. This is a dangerous place. Make no mistake about it. It’s very cute to go and to blame everybody and say we should stay away from anything that smacks of intelligence gathering. The job of our law enforcement is to make sure that they prevent things. And you only do that by being proactive.”

Bloomberg then went on an odd rant, connecting the NYPD’s racial and religious profiling of Muslims to our cherished freedom of speech:

You have to respect people’s right to privacy. You have to obey the law. And I think the police officers across this country, at the federal level, state level, the city level, do that. But having said all of that, you are not going to survive, you will not be able to be a journalist and write what you want to say if the people who want to take away your freedoms are allowed to succeed.

Great…  We don’t want the “people who want to take away your freedoms” [terrorists] to succeed.  So to make sure that they don’t succeed, we will take away our own freedoms.  

To make sure others don’t destroy what’s so great about America, we’ll destroy ourselves. 

Take that, terrorists!   You didn’t get to destroy us after all.  We did it to ourselves.    

Brilliant logic, mayor Bloomberg.
 
Mr. Bloomberg: You are not getting it.  It’s not about being “cute”, as you say.   What’s at stake is nothing less than our civil rights and liberties.   Dr. King had stated:  “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” 

Mr. Bloomberg, where you are choosing to stand in this time of crisis is unbecoming of the leader of one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world.

Mr. Bloomberg:  Allow me to introduce you to a person you seem to have forgotten about.    A fairly important person, named Benjamin Franklin:  “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Mr. Bloomberg: This choice between “essential liberty” and “a little temporary safety” is a false one, and unworthy of our American Dream. 

Mr. Bloomberg:  By profiling, spying on, and marginalizing the weakest and most vilified citizens of our country, you trample on the liberties of all of us, and fail to deliver us safety.    Two losses, with no gain. 

Mr. Bloomberg: During the false “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy (more properly, the manufactured Park51 controversy), you so brilliantly made a case for the pluralistic history of America, and what we as New Yorkers stand for.    You were bold, inclusive, indeed a visionary.     Where is that courage now?  

Mr. Bloomberg:  You become a leader by serving all of your citizens, including the Muslim ones, not by stepping on some during times of fear.

Mr. Bloomberg:  You, and we, can do better.   You, and we, must do better.  

Photo of Bloomberg is from here.

Image of Ben Franklin is from here.

Mandisa Thomas is founder of Black Nonbelievers, an Atlanta-based group of atheists. Religion News Service photo by Bob Mahoney.

Yesterday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that despite the LDS Church's repeated assurances that it would no longer baptize Holocaust victims, someone in the Dominican Republic has recently done precisely that. For Anne Frank, no less.

Moreover, she has been baptized in this way before, only to have the ordinance invalidated because of public complaints about Mormon insensitivity. 

The last two weeks have seen an unprecedented display of media attention to the LDS ritual of baptism for the dead, or "proxy baptism." As for the semantics, both terms are correct, but you can certainly see why in recent years the LDS Church has sought to use the "proxy baptism" label to avoid misunderstandings. (A member of my own extended family, for example, was once convinced that Mormons exhumed the bones of dead people and dragged them forcibly to LDS temples. Aside from the obvious ick factor [as Buffy would say, "raise your hand if eeeewwww"], the logistics of such an undertaking would be seriously daunting.) 

I've been following much of the recent media coverage and the popular response. I've already issued a public plea for Mormons to exercise better judgment when thinking about baptizing any deceased Jews, not just Holocaust victims, and explained some theological points of contention. Here I want to focus instead on the actual practice of proxy baptism, and clear up several misconceptions about how and why it takes place.

1) Proxy baptism is a surprisingly decentralized process. 

In a podcast interview on Mormon Matters this week, I made the argument that the public perception of the LDS Church as somehow authorizing Holocaust baptisms is the Church's own fault. That's not because the Church has equivocated in any way about Holocaust baptisms; it has repeatedly insisted that they are simply not acceptable. It's because the Church has a well-deserved reputation -- one that it constantly encourages -- as being a top-down centralized organization that runs a very tight ship.

The problem is that temple work, which includes baptism for the dead, isn't remotely a tight ship. 

Temple rituals happen when individual Mormons around the world -- not the official organization in Salt Lake City -- submit the names and dates of deceased ancestors through software called TempleReady. The first time I ever did this back in 1994, I was surprised by the lack of bureaucratic oversight in the process. I had been doing genealogical research on my ancestors. I submitted those names to the Washington, D.C. temple for approval, then set a date when a group of people from my ward in New Jersey could come with me to perform the baptisms. No one at the temple checked to make sure those names were those of my actual ancestors (though they were). For such a hierarchical organization, the Church's approach to temple work was highly individualistic, even laissez faire. Some oversight has been instituted since 1995 to prevent baptisms of Holocaust victims, or of celebrities unrelated to the church member who submits the names, but it's still all too possible for an individual Mormon to "go rogue" in this matter. I'm almost never one for stricter controls on the part of the LDS hierarchy, which already wants to dictate too much of Mormon life, but in this case greater supervision is essential.

2) Proxy baptism does not equal posthumous conversion.

This week I stumbled upon the hilarious website alldeadmormonsaregay.com, a satirical approach that lampoons Mormons' heavy-handedness with the dead and the living:

Sadly, many Mormons throughout history have died without having known the joys of homosexuality. With your help, these poor souls can be saved.

Simply enter the name of your favorite dead Mormon in the form below and click Convert! Presto, they're gay for eternity. There is no undo.

Don't know any dead Mormons? Click the "Choose-a-Mormon" button and we'll find one for you. You're welcome!

I got a great laugh out of this -- and I "converted" an alleged Mormon named Janet Lee into being gay. But despite the welcome humor, the site is predicated on two errors: a) that any name listed in the International Genealogical Index is of a Mormon (the vast majority are not Mormon, just as the vast majority of the human population is not Mormon); and b) that a proxy ordinance "converts" any individual in the hereafter. As I said in my post last week, it may not matter to outsiders that this is not a ritual of conversion but one of opportunity -- individuals on the other side of the veil are absolutely entitled to refuse the ordinance if they choose -- but it would be nice if outsiders at least knew the facts about what Mormons actually think they are doing. (As a Jewish friend of mine put it last week in an email conversation, he understands that Mormon proxy baptism is like getting a credit card offer in the mail: it's up to him to activate it. He's still not interested, thanks.)

The IGI question is interesting. Last week Elie Wiesel called upon Mitt Romney for moral reform when Wiesel learned that his own Jewish parents were listed in the IGI. But as I said above, the IGI is not an index of non-Mormons who have had temple rituals performed for them; there is a much smaller database of those names. The LDS Church through its genealogical program scans parish registers, census data, military records, obituaries, marriage licenses and the like for many nations and many centuries and consolidates them into a huge public record that is available to all. Some fraction of the people listed in the IGI have had ordinances done, but most have not. So when I "converted" the IGI's Janet Lee from being "Mormon" to being gay, chances are actually better that Janet was Anglican, Catholic, or agnostic than Mormon.

3) Mitt Romney is probably not dissembling when he says he hasn't participated in proxy baptisms for a long time.

This is a minor point, but I have gotten the feeling that some members of the media doubt Mitt Romney's veracity when he claims to have participated in proxy baptism in the past, but not in a long time. This isn't flip-flopping. In Mormon tradition, proxy baptism is a ritual usually performed by teenagers and young adults, not middle-aged or older folks like Romney. For many Mormon youth, proxy baptism is their first introduction to a Mormon temple. Although the ritual itself is basically the same as any live baptism performed in an ordinary meetinghouse and open to the public, it takes on a new significance within the "sacred space" of the temple. 

Mitt Romney's older grandkids are probably doing proxy baptisms for the dead nowadays, but Mitt and Ann wouldn't be unusual if they hadn't done so in some time, except perhaps as chaperones on a youth temple trip. 

My last argument is a very basic one. Mormons generally have the best of intentions when they perform proxy baptism, and their belief actually benefits the world in a specific and tangible way; because they pour so much energy into collecting geneaological information and making it publicly available, they provide a gift of recordkeeping to the world.

Even considering that, Mormons should try harder -- much harder -- to understand why some people view baptism for the dead as offensive or commandeering. 

Photo of temple baptismal font from RNS Archives.

"I often find myself thinking, I wish a good number of my congregation were as devoted to daily spiritual growth as this man is."

Florida megachurch Joel Hunter, who serves as a spiritual adviser to President Obama, defending Obama’s faith in a Thursday (Feb. 23) conference call with reporters.

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Mandisa Thomas is founder of Black Nonbelievers, an Atlanta-based group of atheists. Religion News Service photo by Bob Mahoney.

(RNS) As a child, Alix Jules saw people in church speak in tongues, tremble, fall and have what appeared to be very genuine connections with God.

But not him. "I never tingled," he said.

By his twenties, Jules was an atheist. But he never told his family, who were deeply rooted in their predominantly black Catholic congregation. They believed he was having a crisis of faith -- turned off by organized religion but still a believer. For years, he let them think that.

Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an event in which religion played a role.

"On September 12, I used the word 'atheist' for the first time," said Jules, who lives in Texas. "It wasn't too long after that my family stopped returning my phone calls."

Now, at age 37, Jules has been ostracized  by his mother and cousins. His story is typical of many African-American atheists who say that to 'come out' as nonbelievers in their community is to risk everything -- friends, family, business ties, even their racial and cultural identity.

"There is an idea that it is mandatory for blacks to believe in God," said Mandisa Thomas, founder of Black Nonbelievers, an Atlanta group.

"We have heard this from preachers who say blacks would not have gotten anywhere without faith. And if you do not believe in God, you are ostracized, targeted by family and friends, accused of trying to be white. There is this idea that if you subscribe to atheism you are betraying your race, you are betraying your culture, you are betraying your history as well."

Now, a growing number of African-American nonbelievers are reaching out to others in their communities to help them confront these challenges. They are calling on atheists of all colors to make the fourth Sunday in February -- Black History Month -- a "Day of Solidarity with Black Nonbelievers."

About 15 groups in as many cities -- Dallas, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles -- have scheduled events for Feb. 26. Some will share a meal, others will make formal presentations and discuss the role of African-American freethinkers in history. But the real goal is to let closeted black atheists know they are not alone.

"We lend an ear," Thomas said. "We can say, 'I understand what you are going through because I've been through it.'"

The Day of Solidarity originated last year with Donald Wright, a Houston consultant who has written about his own journey from the black church to atheism. Fellowship with other atheists is critical, he said, if black nonbelievers are to move not only out of the closet, but also into the mainstream of American life.

"Emails, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging cannot replace face-to-face communication," Wright said in a 2011 interview with the blog Black Skeptics Group. "As nonbelievers, we must become more visible and our voices heard."

Studies show that African-Americans are one of the most religious U.S. groups. A 2008 Pew Forum survey found 88 percent of African-Americans believe in God with "absolute certainty," compared with 71 percent of the broader population. More than half reported attending religious services at least weekly.

But Anthony Pinn, an expert on African-American religion at Rice University in Texas, said it is a mistake to assume that all churchgoing African-Americans are believers. Like secular Jews who maintain ties to a synagogue, some African-Americans remain in the black church for the services it provides -- child care, counseling, for example -- and for its connection to black culture.

"The sermon is the price you pay for that," Pinn said.

African-American atheism may be on the rise. Black Atheists of America, a Facebook group, has grown from 100 members to more than 3,400, and Black Nonbelievers, founded by Thomas in 2010 in Atlanta, recently expanded to a national organization. In January, African Americans for Humanism launched a billboard campaign to nonbelievers of color, and has since grown by one new chapter, in Detroit.

Much of the interest is coming from younger African-Americans. Debbie Goddard, director of African Americans for Humanism, reports three new campus-based chapters -- a first for that organization.

"We have interest at a few historically black colleges and universities, and that wasn't a thing before," Goddard said. "A year from now, I expect we'll have six to 10 groups at" historically black schools.

Monica Miller, a religious studies fellow at Lewis and Clark College, studies humanist attitudes among younger African-Americans. Her work, she said, shows "overwhelmingly" that nontheism is flourishing among them.

She believes many young African-Americans possess "an inherited religiosity" that pays lip service to faith to appease family members and maintain status in their communities, which are sometimes overwhelmingly religious.

It is these people that the Day of Solidarity is intended to reach.

Jules will mark the day in Dallas, where he is a leader in the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason. He is one of its more public members, smiling down from one of AAH's billboards, which reads "Doubts about religion? You are not alone."

Jules does not feel alone, despite the death threats, condemnations and charges of being a "race traitor" he has received since the billboard went up.

"I have found a bigger family in my local community," Jules said. "They are all freethinkers, all races and they are nonjudgmental."

Southern Baptist Jimmy Draper addresses members of a committee that considered changing the SBC's name.

Photo courtesy of the Southern Baptist Convention

(RNS) As the Southern Baptist Convention recently weighed changing its name, denominational leaders were bombarded with suggestions. Hundreds of them.

Most suggestions avoided the word "Southern" but one hinted at the denomination's regional flavor: Baptist Ultimate Bible Believing Alliance, or BUBBA.

In the end, leaders recommended the unofficial moniker "Great Commission Baptists."

Here's a sampling of some of the more intriguing rejected names:

-- Association of Thriving Baptist Churches

-- Baptist Southern Convention

-- Christian Synergy Convention

-- Ends of the Earth Baptists

-- Eternal Baptist Convention

-- Friendly Family Church of America

-- Global Association of Immersing Christians

-- Global Association of Immersing Evangelicals

-- Jesus Christ is Lord Baptist Convention

-- League of Baptist Messengers
 

No one sported ashes at last night’s Republican debate. (Maybe Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich needed a drive-thru service.)

But everyone did penance. Mitt and Rick pounded each other, and Newt had to watch. Then they all got to criticize Obama for promoting policies on contraception that they used to support themselves. (Scroll down to Minute 46 for the best bits.)

Except for Ron Paul, a doctor, who doesn’t have to finesse the contraception issue because he’s always had the same view: “I think the immorality creates the problem of wanting to use the pills. So you don’t blame the pills.”

In Washington State, meanwhile, pharmacists who believe life begins at conception won’t have to dispense morning-after pills.

And Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has retreated from his support for a bill that would generally require a vaginal probe ultrasound before a woman could have an abortion.

McDonnell shouldn’t feel too bad about the shift; Mitt Romney made a lot more of them on the abortion issue, as Slate’s Will Saletan shows.

Rick Santorum might want to think about shifting his views on torture if he wants to keep the mantle of the Best Catholic Candidate Ever.

A Catholic bishop in Illinois and a priest he fired for not following the new prayers in the revised Mass continue to trade charges of bad faith.

Franklin Graham has “clarified” his views on President Obama's faith, but he still seems pretty unclear.

Obama has sent a letter to the Afghan president formally apologizing for the burning of Korans at the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan. Furor over the desecration continues to spark protests.

Many African-Americans didn’t need religious faith to believe in the civil rights struggle, and to advance the cause alongside the likes of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the “Kosher Sex” author and media phenom, wants to be the first rabbi elected to the U.S. Congress. But he’s finding that the media can also ask uncomfortable questions when you’re running for office.

Maybe he needs to swear off politics. Maybe we all do. Hey, science is showing that self-denial can be good for you!

David Gibson

AP photo via The Daily Breeze

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Earlier this month the the Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, told the U.S. House that he will "stand with our friends in the Catholic Church'' in opposition to a recent government ruling on contraception. Photo courtesy of U.S. House of Representatives.

ST. LOUIS (RNS) Lutherans and Catholics are not historically known for their theological sympathy, but earlier this month the president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod told the U.S. House that he will "stand with our friends in the Catholic Church" in opposition to a recent government ruling on contraception.

History aside, the Rev. Matthew Harrison made it clear that the Missouri Synod now has "large consensus with the Roman Catholic Church on moral issues."

"The Christian church is a billion times beyond the Missouri Synod," Harrison said. "Without the Roman Catholic Church in this country, our way would be infinitely more difficult."

So when Harrison, who was elected president of the LCMS in 2010, received an invitation to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, he reluctantly agreed. He sat on a panel with other religious leaders and scholars, including Roman Catholic Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University in New York.

Harrison delivered a fiery indictment on Feb. 16 before lawmakers, venturing past the issue of contraception and deep into broad issues of intolerance and righteousness.

President Obama's administration triggered the battle over the contraception mandate last month when it ruled that religiously affiliated institutions, like universities and hospitals, must include free birth control coverage in their employee health coverage.

Houses of worship and their organizing authorities were exempted from the requirement, but Catholic bishops nevertheless coordinated a firestorm of protest, arguing that the ruling would force Catholics to violate their consciences and was therefore an infringement on their First Amendment right to free religious expression. They were joined by some Orthodox rabbis, evangelical Christian leaders and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The White House and women's groups argued that the mandate had nothing to do with the First Amendment. It was, they said, about improving women's health. The surge of protest was large enough, however, that earlier this month the administration modified the ruling so that the organizations' insurance companies -- not the religious organizations themselves -- would pay for birth control costs.

The roots of the Catholic Church's opposition to contraception can be traced to the second century. In the modern age, that opposition was most famously reaffirmed by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, or "Of Human Life." The Catholic Church teaches that because artificial contraception suppresses the possibility of procreation, and therefore violates the natural law, it is always wrong.

Most other Christian churches -- including the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod -- accept artificial contraception as a responsible method of family planning. But, like the Catholic Church, the Missouri Synod does oppose so-called abortifacients, chemical substances that interfere with the ability of a newly fertilized egg to implant in the mother's womb.

While the administration has said drugs that cause abortion are not covered under the plan, there is some disagreement among church leaders and administration officials on the definition of an abortifacient.

Harrison told lawmakers that the synod's opposition to "abortion-causing drugs" was one reason the denomination maintains its own health plan. A provision in the government's new ruling would "grandfather" the Missouri Synod's plan, meaning its 50,000 members would not have to participate in the new mandate.

But the "grandfather" clause doesn't mollify Harrison. He's still aching from a recent legal clash with the Obama administration -- a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court victory last month for the church involving a school owned and operated by a Missouri Synod member congregation. The ruling, known as Hosanna-Tabor, said religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination. But the battle -- with the Obama administration arguing the other side -- exposed for Harrison a White House that he now believes is hostile to religious institutions, and it left him bitter because of it.

Hosanna-Tabor "gives us no comfort that this administration will be concerned to guard our free-exercise rights," Harrison told Congress.

Missouri Synod Lutherans and Roman Catholics agree on other issues. Both, for instance, are opposed to a new Illinois law that grants same-sex couples the right to seek civil unions and disrupted the work of Catholic agencies working in foster care and adoption.

During his five-minute testimony, Harrison was visibly angry. His goal, he said, was to tell Congress to "get the federal government out of matters of conscience for religious people, particularly in life issues where there's long-standing moral and ethical church precedent."

But he also wanted to drive home the intense feeling of alienation that, he said, conservative people of faith feel under the Obama administration. He said he would rather go to jail than comply with even the modified mandate, and that he would "give up my sons to fight" for the First Amendment.

Later, he explained those comments: "We've laid down our blood to have a free exercise of religion in this country and will continue to do so."

(Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.)

I think it's pretty cool that a Southern Baptist Convention task force should embrace one of my rebranding ideas and recommend that Southern Baptists henceforth be authorized to call themselves "Great Commission Baptists." Of course, as Jeff Weiss suggests over at RealClearReligion, it's not as if other churches aren't also down with Jesus's injunction in Matthew 28:16 (and elsewhere) to baptize all nations. The only Christian groups I can think of that go with what's known as the Limited Commission are the Messianic Jewish ones, which focus their proselytizing attention on Jews per Jesus' instruction to the disciples in Matthew 10:5-6: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

So it seems a little, well, chutzpahdik of the SBC to claim to be the Great Commission Baptists. That is, until you realize that for Southern Baptists, the whole Great Commission thing understands "all nations" to be "non-Southerners." For while the "Southern" in "Southern Baptist Convention" may be a drag on the brand outside the South, in Alabam' it's all about the Promised Land (apologies to Paul Harvey and Hank Williams, Jr.) To grow the shrinking denomination, it can never more be said, "Go not into the way of the Yankees, and into New York City enter ye not. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Dixie."

Photo by Brian Byrnes. Licensed under Creative Commons.

A. Philip Randolph was the co-leader with Martin Luther King of the 1963 March on Washington and was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black union. RNS photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A. Philip Randolph was the co-leader with Martin Luther King of the 1963 March on Washington and was the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly black union.

Mandisa Thomas of Atlanta is featured alongside Langston Hughes on a billboard in Atlanta that's part of a campaign featuring icons of the civil rights movement who were not religious, sponsored by the group African Americans for Humanism. RNS photo by Bob Mahoney.

Mandisa Thomas of Atlanta is featured alongside Langston Hughes on a billboard in Atlanta that's part of a campaign featuring icons of the civil rights movement who were not religious, sponsored by the group African Americans for Humanism.

African Americans for Humanism have erected billboards in several cities featuring black icons, including Langston Hughes on this billboard in Atlanta, alongside African-American atheists. RNS photo by Bob Mahoney.

African Americans for Humanism have erected billboards in several cities featuring black icons, including Langston Hughes on this billboard in Atlanta, alongside African-American atheists.

Lorraine Hansberry, playwright and journalist, was most famous for her partly autobiographical play, "A Raisin in the Sun." RNS photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Lorraine Hansberry, playwright and journalist, was most famous for her partly autobiographical play, "A Raisin in the Sun."

Religious liberty advocates cheered the decision. They have decried the 2007 state regulation as a violation of pharmacists' First Amendment rights, which guarantee freedom of religion.

"Today's decision sends a very clear message: No individual can be forced out of her profession solely because of her religious beliefs," said Luke Goodrich, deputy national litigation director at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The Becket Fund was co-counsel for two pharmacists who believe that life begins at the fertilization of a human egg, and can be destroyed by the pills.

Many advocates for women's health had applauded the state's Board of Pharmacy rule of as a way to guarantee greater access to the drugs within the short time frame -- between three and five days after intercourse -- when they are effective. When taken soon after unprotected sexual intercourse, the drugs (known as Plan B and ella) are between 75 to 90 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.

The decision comes in the midst of a firestorm over the Obama administration's Jan. 20 decision to require nearly all employers to cover free birth control through their insurance plans. That decision has outraged religious conservatives who consider it a directive to ignore their religious convictions.
 

W.E.B. du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP. Du Bois described himself as a freethinker and was sometimes critical of the black church. RNS photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

W.E.B. du Bois, co-founder of the NAACP. Du Bois described himself as a freethinker and was sometimes critical of the black church.