809. 100317 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
D R A F T

Among the area’s yearly prayer breakfasts, none I know compares to the one sponsored by the Raytown Community Inter-Faith Alliance. Most prayer breakfasts are designed around a speech by a high-profile figure, with a nice meal and a perfunctory prayer. But the Alliance event’s focus is actually prayer.
   Before the featured speaker, people form teams at their tables to write local, national and global prayer requests on index cards of three different colors. During the speaker’s remarks, a committee collects, studies and arranges the cards. Then three people, one for each set of cards, lead the assembly in prayer.
   I like this because the whole group gets to hear what everyone is praying for. 
   But the speaker is also important. And this year for the first time a Muslim will address the group.
   Adam Smith, the Alliance president and an attorney, became acquainted with Hussain Haideri, a nephrologist, through Smith’s wife, a nurse practitioner in Haideri’s office, and invited him to speak at the breakfast.
   The Rev. Harold Johnson, a long-time member of the Alliance, said the group tries to help the community to become better acquainted with its diversity. He noted that the Alliance’s speaker at its Thanksgiving program last year was Jewish. 
   Haideri has been president of the Crescent Peace Society, a local Muslim group organized in 1996 by Shaheen and Iftekhar Ahmed to “enhance the understanding . . . as to who we (Muslims) are and what we stand for,” according to the organization’s web site, crescentpeace.org.
   Haideri says that there are many misconceptions about Islam. Its belief in democracy is not well understood because some nations claiming Islam “ignore the just form of governance Islam advocates to hold onto power,” he said.
   “As a religion, Islam also fosters respect for the rights of the people, and the welfare of all sections of the population, irrespective of religious and political affiliations. It requires justice for all, a code of conduct for governmental leaders and accountability for even those holding the highest office,” he said.
   Often I get hateful emails spewing falsehoods about this, that or another faith. So at the breakfast, I’ll be praying for greater understanding of Islam and all faiths, locally, nationally, and throughout the world. My prayer will include giving thanks for groups like the Alliance and the Crescent Peace Society that multiply the power of personal relationships, like the Adams-Haideri acquaintance, into community-wide strength.
   For information about the Mar. 25 breakfast, contact the Rev. Michael Stephens, southwoodpastor@yahoo.com or 816-353-9090.

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808. 100310 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
A model of our urban core

Before we discuss the modern city, here’s some background.
   David conquered Jerusalem about 3000 years ago to make it the capital of Israel. The kingdom split about 80 years later; and after another 200 years, the Assyrians crushed the northern kingdom. The southern kingdom survived for another 125 years until the Babylonians subdued it and exiled much of the population. 
   After perhaps two generations of captivity, Jews were encouraged to return home. Prophets offered insights into the rebuilding of the nation, and particularly Jerusalem, its urban center.
   You know our local history, including [emancipation, in-migration,] redlining, blockbusting, white flight and urban sprawl.
   In some ways the challenges of today’s inner city parallels the bleak biblical situation, according to Wallace S. Hartsfield II lecturing [February 9] at the Gem Theater just before he was installed as professor of Hebrew Bible at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also pastor of Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, where he succeeded his father [in 2008]. 
   Populated by those who had never left and those who were returning from captivity, distressed Jerusalem is like today’s inner city, ruined and exposed. What is the remedy for a “density” inadequate to bolster the people’s hopes?
   Hartsfield identified four responses from post-Exilic prophets, focusing on the role of religious institutions.
   Haggai agitated against discouragement and complacency. While resources to address the city’s plight were few, he said building and serving the temple, the executive source of divine order, would produce prosperity.
   Zachariah’s mystical vision required a moral transformation with God guarding and dwelling in the midst of a diverse people, with the city guided by civic and religious leaders.
   Malachi criticized the priesthood for its failures and warned that if God’s presence departs, the city falls. The temple should mediate divine order for the city. 
   Trito-Isaiah, whose writings scholars find in Isaiah 56-66, said that the temple should be open to foreigners and its sacrifice replaced with liberating service to the poor and broken-hearted. 
   What is the role of today’s religious leadership — confrontation, transformation, meditation or liberation? Hartsfield said that no single model applies to current urban problems, but each may fit a different situation. 
   However, in sum, reconciliation is the heart of restoration, he said, and faith communities must participate in the rebuilding of the wounded city. 
   To create true community, those who have not talked together must find common ground. Righteousness, Hartsfield said, must be our ultimate concern.

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807. 100303 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
‘People’ only in a legal sense

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .”
   Like this historic document, many faiths proclaim that each person issues from the divine.
   But the U.S. Supreme Court, split 5-4, may have inadvertently implied a new theology in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,” deciding Jan. 21 that corporations are persons under the Constitution’s First Amendment free-speech clause.
   Lloyd Blankfein said last year that he was “doing God’s work” as head of Goldman Sachs investment bank. Still, in what sense is even a very good corporation really a person with inherent, rather than calculable, worth?
   Nancy Howell, professor of theology at the Saint Paul School of Theology, says, “In Christianity, I am persuaded that the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels in the New Testament insist on relationships, but not of the rich and privileged with each other. 
   “Instead, Christian roots point us toward setting aside privilege in order to identify with the disadvantaged — in Bible language, the poor, the widows and the orphans. 
   “If only the Supreme Court had ruled that the poor and disenfranchised persons could have relatively unlimited access to political influence, what a difference that might make! As it is, the status quo which benefits the privileged is reinforced.”
   Thomas Noble, professor of theology at the Nazarene Theological Seminary, distinguishes personhood from individuality, which can imply separateness.
   “The Christian idea of personhood derives from one God in the three ‘persons’ who are in relationship with each other. Thus what it means to be human is to be in relationship,” he said.
   But Noble questions “whether a top-down business corporation can routinely deal with the ethical questions involved with ordinary personal relationships where the focus is on mutuality rather than profit,” rewarding the shareholder rather than pursuing the wider good of the community.
   Barb McAtee, Baha’i Faith member of the Greater Kansas City Interfaith Council, notes that while her faith encourages trade, commerce and useful economic activity, the sacred Baha’i writings suggest that corporations are the “legal constructs of a secular society” and do not “possess any sort of mystical oneness” as do persons created in “the image of God.”
   In a Jewish tradition, it is said that a choir of invisible angels cry ahead of any person walking down the street, “Make way! Make way for the image of God.”
   Do corporations, created by governments, receive such angelic attention?

NOTE
This month’s annual interfaith program offered by the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women was on the theme, “May the God in me recognize the God in you,” a way of translating the Hindu greeting, “Namaste.” It is difficult to imagine such a greeting from one corporation to another. 
   The Supreme Court, by inadvertently venturing into the theology of personhood, a danger it avoided in Roe v. Wade by focusing on practical rule, illustrates the peril in departing from common law and common sense understandings of personhood.
   The court’s decision has been summarized as invalidating “a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act that banned for-profit and not-for-profit corporations and unions from broadcasting ‘electioneering communications’ in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections. The decision completely overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) and partially overruled McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003). The decision upheld the requirements for disclaimer and disclosure by sponsors of advertisements, and the ban on direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidates.”
   The decision was criticized by President Barack Obama in his January 27 State of the Union address. A poll two weeks after the decision by ABC-Washington Post showed opposition from 80% of those surveyed. The complete text of the decision and accompanying opinions can be found on the Court’s website, http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
   Much of the comment since the decision has focused on its effects, anticipated by Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent, “At bottom, the Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
   Other criticism has come from (1) the fact that the Court violated the professed allegiance of the majority to stare decisis, the legal doctrine that precedents should be followed, (2) the hope  expressed that when previous rulings are overturned, the Court would be more united, and (3) the apparent contradiction embedded in the majority decision that the First Amendment may not discriminate against corporations on the basis of the status of persons with the Roberts 2007 Morse v. Frederick decision that students' First Amendment rights in some cases must yield to other concerns.
   However, the issue in this column is not the consequence of the decision but the implied theology of personhood.
   In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens noted that “corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires,” “they cannot vote or run for office,” and their (primary) interests are 
economic and do not include the health and welfare of society, do not seek the free flow of ideas, and in their acts may not reflect the will of shareholders. Justice Stevens cites American history in which the word “soulless” constantly recurs in debates about corporations.
   After admitting that corporations’ “‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction,” Stevens says that corporations "are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”
   The legal fiction that corporations are persons begins with a 1886 Railroad case (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad) in which a court reporter noted a spoken remark that the Justices believed that corporations are entitled to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment (assuring Constitutional rights to former slaves and their descendents). The obiter dictum was subsequently treated as if it were part of the written decision, which it is not. 
   It is ironic that a railroad lawyer had written in 1864 that “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” That lawyer was Abraham Lincoln.
   Nonetheless, since corporations are created by governments, not by God, many laws in every state fact regulate corporations in ways that natural persons are not regulated.
   In one of the classics of American thought, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned that “the institutions of democracy have never become fully divorced from the special interests of the commercial classes” whose interest is “to destroy political restraint upon economic activity” and thus become socially “irresponsible.” He denies that “the democratic movement” assures “a permanent solution for its vexing problems of power and justice [pages 14-15 of the 1963 British printing].” The power of American corporations to distort the political process and  pervert human values is no different in effect than earlier Continental ruling classes: “The American business oligarchy is not as hereditary as European landed aristocracies, but is for that reason neither more virtuous nor less tenacious in clinging to its power and privilege. [193-194]” However, Niebuhr, citing Gandhi, distinguishes the oppressive system which must be confronted with assuming all who occupy position of power are necessarily evil. Nonetheless, it is “impossible completely to disassociate an evil system from the personal moral responsibilities of the individuals who maintain it [249],” though it is wise tactics to focus on the system rather than the person in conducting social disputes. While it is rare for a person to act to sacrifice one’s self-interest, it is even more difficult for a group to do so. When individuals become part of a group, their ethical inclinations are often submerged by the ruthlessness of the group. The meaning of Niebuhr’s classic in this context is clear: a person and a corporation are morally distinct and the Court’s decision to equate the mighty corporation with the individual citizen may, without statutory restraints, further corrupt the political process, though the decision applies to “electioneering communications” financed by corporations and unions rather than money directly given to candidates.
   Nevertheless, Fred Logan, an astute political observer who knows how politics actually works, a frequent KCPT “Kansas City Week in Review” guest and regular columnist for the Kansas City Business Journal, finds (January 29)  the Court majority “got it right” and says that “it’s still Constitutionally acceptable to place limits on the amounts that donors may give to a candidate and to require disclosure of donor names and they sums they contribute.” He also advocates internet posting of contribution information within 72 hours.

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806. 100224 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
Talmud shows way to purposeful dialogue

Religious arguments are sometimes considered impolite or even dangerous. But face to face debate with stylized gestures is actually required in some forms of Buddhist training. The purpose is to deconstruct and transform doctrines into ways of living.
   Perhaps even endless arguments are important, to remind us that we never can state the truth for all time and all persons and all situations, for each turn in the controversy may yield growing insight.
   No religious literature may better illustrate this than the Talmud, the compedium of, and commentaries on, Jewish law, completed roughly 1500 years ago.
   Is the Talmud complete? If Talmud is a continuing process of argumentation rather than merely a record of past disputation, then disagreement can be an ongoing, respectful way of moving toward fuller understandings.
   This is what Sergey Dolgopolski, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas, offers in his ground-breaking book, What is Talmud?: The Art of Disagreement.
   From Socrates on, the Western tradition has assumed that the purpose of dialogue is to find agreement.
   But Dolgopolski suggests that Talmud — as an art, not a text — aims instead at reducing misunderstandings.
   Suppose I meet my friend for coffee. I begin the conversation, “It’s really been snowing.” That’s all I say.
   But in context, I was apologizing. I implied, “I know I’m a bad person for being late. I should have allotted more time to get here because of the weather.” 
   My friend says, “I just got here myself.” 
   Without being explicit, by recognizing the traffic mess, my friend is disagreeing with my thinking I’m incompetent.
   The disagreement, in this case subtle and unspoken, leads to removing a misunderstanding about how my friend might regard me.
   Theological disputes often involve assumptions that, unlike my perceptive friend, are hidden even to the proponent until an argument leads to a clarification. 
   Interfaith conversation is too often circumscribed by an unspoken fear of argument. Folks sometimes submerge differences in search for common ground.
   But disagreement should be welcomed, not discouraged. Interfaith exchange need not aim toward mutual assent but rather toward clarification. 
   Talmud is a Jewish tradition, but as a method it can be a gift to the interfaith conversation.
   Dolgopolski gives a free lecture tonight at 7 about Talmud at the Jewish Community Center, 5801 W. 115 St., Overland Park. Call 913 327 4647 for information. Next month he begins a 4-part mini-course at the Center.

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805. 100217 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
Recalling the passions of Bertrand Russell

Forty years ago this month he died in his 98th year, and I’d like to remember him today. I never met him, perhaps the greatest atheist of the century, but I do cherish a letter he wrote me in 1962 on stationery from his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.
   The letter is headed “From: The Earl Russell, O.M., F.R.S.”
   Lord Bertrand Russell began by apologizing for his tardy reply to my inquiry. I later figured out the delay may have been caused by his being in jail — again — for protesting nuclear armaments.
   In high school I had read his essay, “Why I am not a Christian.” He seemed to demolish every proof I ever considered for the existence of God. I became a militant atheist. 
   Elsewhere he said trying to prove that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and other Homeric gods, like the Christian God, did not exist would be “an awful job,” so in that sense he was an agnostic.
   Later I decided what he wrote was besides the point. His view of religion was too narrow. He said fear is the basis of religion, but I think religion arises from wonder.
   Still, the stimulus of his challenge purified my own faith.
   Russell was a critic not only of religion but also of science, which at one point he wrote “is teaching our children to kill each other,” and worried about scientists as much as priests “because many men of science are willing to sacrifice the future of mankind to their own momentary prosperity.”
   This year marks the centenary of the first volume of the work that made him world-famous, “Principia Mathematica,” written with Alfred North Whitehead. 
   Russell wrote not only technical philosophy but popular works as well, such as advocating contraception, scandalous at the time.
   His 900-page “History of Western Philosophy” was published in 1945. The book is full of wit, humor and devastating sarcasm.
   But as I was recently rereading his chapter on Spinoza in my well-worn $2.25 copy, I was struck less by Russell’s rejection of Spinoza’s God-centered metaphysics and more by Russell’s admiration for Spinoza as a person. Of his ethics, Russell writes, Spinoza shows us “how it is possible to live nobly even when we recognize the limits of human power” to end suffering.
   In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
   Whatever his Freethinker views, the depth of his humanity is summarized in his own words: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.” 
   Are not these three passions essentially religious?

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804. 100210 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
A VALENTINE'S TEST OF LOVE

Here’s a Valentine’s Day quiz.
   1. St. Paul lists three things that last forever: faith, hope and love. Which does he say is greatest?
   2. Who wrote, “The religion of love shall be my religion and my faith?”
   3. What book in Hebrew scripture consists of erotic poems?
   4. Has love always been the primary consideration for marriage throughout history in the Christian West?
   5. Which two of these three ancient Chinese sages thought especially deeply about love? Laozi, Mozi, Confucius. 
   6. Has an intimate love relationship been the dominant goal for most people in all cultures?
   7. How many wives did Solomon have?
   8. Did the Greek demigod Hercules make love to other men as well to women?
   9. What Hindu god stole butter as a child from milkmaids and later, as a young man with his flute, amorously pursued them?
   10. What great Christian theologian compared marriage to a hospital for curing lust?
   11. What group of 17th Century Protestants called marriage “the little church within the church”?
   12. What Muslim scholar praised romantic love because it made selfish people generous and the unmannered gracious, and insisted that sex completed “the circuit (to) allow the current of love to flow freely into the soul”?
   13. Did ancient Romans observe a fertility rite on February 15th?
   14. What Buddhist ideal of unconditional love postpones his or her own enlightenment until all other creatures are saved?
   15. What male Christian poet, inspired by his ideal woman, wrote that God’s love moves the sun and the stars?

ANSWERS:
   1. Love.
   2. The 12th Century Muslim mystic, Ibn Arabi. Rumi in the 13th Century wrote similarly.
   3. The Song of Solomon.
   4. No. For much of the last two thousand years, marriage has been more about property and extended family arrangements.
     5. Mozi taught that love, the most powerful force in the world, should be extended to everyone. Confucius focused more on family affections.
   6. No. Heroism, for example, was probably a more important ideal for the ancient Greeks.
   7. To Solomon’s 700 wives we might add his 300 concubines.
   8. Yes.   9. Krishna.
  10. Martin Luther.
  11. The Puritans.
  12. Hazm of Cordova, 10th Century.
  13. You bet.
  14. The bodhisattva.
  15. Dante.

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803. 100203 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
To believe is to live with wonder

The story of how anything — say today’s newspaper — came into being is far more involved than we usually recognize. In The Star’s case, we’d have to mention the Phoenician alphabet, the Great Vowel Shift, the printing press, the First Amendment, the settling of Kansas City, William Rockhill Nelson and countless other factors.
   The story of religion is far more complicated. 
   Here’s where we are: Both the “new atheists” and many popular religionists focus on the literal truth of theological statements such as “God exists.” The atheists say such statements are false while these religionists say they are true.
   How did we get to the today’s situation when pollsters measure the meaning of religion by, in part, asking what people believe — when historically such questions were besides the point?
   To tell the story, Karen Armstrong’s new book, “The Case for God,” though focused on Christianity, ranges from Paleolithic cave paintings to Postmodernism.
   For most of history, Armstrong says, the purpose of religion has been practical, guiding folks how to live their lives, not about theoretical questions. People need experiences more than explanations.
   Today religion is often characterized by “belief,” so let’s look at that word’s pedigree.
   Related to the Latin word libido, desire, and the German liebe, beloved, the term “belief” in English originally meant trust, commitment, engagement, what you love and prize. It did not mean assent to abstract theological formulations.
   It’s more “I love my spouse” than “My spouse exists.”
   Even the word “creed” was originally an experiential rather than an intellectual matter. The term comes from the Latin words cor do, I give my heart. (Cardiology and donation are related to these two Latin words.)*
   With few exceptions until the modern period, religion directed the heart to models for living with beauty, suffering and awareness of mortality. Life’s wonders and horrors were not boxed up into mere strings of words.
   Saying God exists was as unnecessary as saying reality exists.
   But in the modern era, God has been reduced from mystery to a Being among other beings, from what is beyond discursive language to factual assertions.
   Historically, religion has not focused on literal truth so much as it has been in testing what is genuine.
   Religion at its best offers experiences and communities that guide us so that we can answer the question, “How shall I live my life?” by striving to live in wonder, with gratitude, and by offering compassionate service.

*CRES WEB-ONLY NOTE
   The "car" in cardiology comes from Greek, but both car and cor derive from earlier Indo-European roots.

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802. 100127 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
Look to the sky for divine music

In third grade I fell in love with the mystery of how and why things moved in the sky. By the fourth grade I had read every book in the library on astronomy.
   When my teacher had me give a talk on my discoveries, the principal sat in and immediately  had me repeat my talk for every other class in the school through eighth grade.
   This personal history is to explain why, when my uncle gave me a telescope and through it I saw the moon, I was so thrilled to see up close what I considered God’s handiwork.
   In 1969 that private thrill was matched by a public one as the entire world saw a human set foot on the moon.
   Last week I was again thrilled — at Linda Hall Library, when William B. Ashworth, Jr., showed me a 400-year old first edition of Galileo’s book describing his observations of the moon and Jupiter with four of its moons, with the telescope he himself had made.
   By the way, this world-famous private science and technology library is free and open to the public, including its William N. Deramus III Cosmology Theater, with continuous programs with amazing views of the heavens.
   In Galileo’s time, faith, the arts and science were more obviously related than they often are today. 
   For example, in Book 4, part 1, section 4 of Kepler’s “Epitome of Copernican Astronomy,” Kepler argues that the reason the sun occupies 1/720th (1/2 of a degree) of the sky relates to the eight tones of the major and minor musical scales, a theory he advances by citing Moses.
   And Kepler’s 18th reason that the earth cannot be the stationary center of the universe is that God wants us to move about, to see his wonders.
   The idea of the “harmony of the spheres” originated with a model of the sky in which the stars and planets revolve on concentric spheres whose distances were arranged in divine geometrical and musical order. 
   Galileo’s troubles with the Roman Catholic Church are well-known, ending only in our time, beginning in 1992, when Pope John Paul II acknowledged the Church’s errors, and continuing with recent praise by Pope Benedict XVI.
   I expect to be thrilled again Jan. 31 by the Friends of Chamber Music’s presentation of “The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres” with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra performing with images from NASA and the Hubble Telescope. 
   Ashworth will lecture at 2:30 about the legacy of Galileo, using images from original editions in Linda Hall Library, before the 4 pm concert at the Folly Theater, 
   Scientific advances can help us appreciate the music of the spheres in ways that would have astonished even Galileo. 

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801. 100120 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
 MLK's Missouri bookends

One of America’s greatest theologians was born in Missouri (Wright City, near St. Louis). Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) influenced Martin Luther King Jr, who, in King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, cited Niebuhr’s insight that “groups are more immoral than individuals.”
   And Niebuhr’s influence on Obama’s speeches at West Point and Oslo as well as the Inaugural Address are now well-known. 
   Obama himself explicitly summarized Niebuhr’s thought: “there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”
   Words often credited to Niebuhr are spoken by thousands every day in Alcoholics Anonymous groups, the serenity prayer, one form of which is, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.”
   Abraham Lincoln is sometimes included with Niebuhr and King because all three combined a keen awareness of injustice with a modesty about eradicating it. Like Lincoln and Niebuhr, Obama has avoided triumphalism in speaking about war even while it may sometimes be required.
   Niebuhr described democracy as a “method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.”
   From Niebuhr, King learned that justice is a precondition for peace.
   Like Niebuhr, King opposed the Vietnam War. When I heard King speak about that in 1967 at a clergy gathering in Washington, DC, the sense of evil was palpable not only about the war but also in the fear for King’s personal safety I saw in the faces of his aides. King would be assassinated a year later.
   Those who say all we need to do to bring peace to the world is think happy thoughts and have love in our own souls are challenged by the “Christian realism” of Niebuhr and by King’s example.
   Still, I think Niebuhr’s tragic sense of history was moderated for King by Gandhi’s non-violent method for social change, which reminded its practitioners of their own evil capacities and the good in their opponents, and by another Missouri theologian, about whom King wrote in his doctoral dissertation.
  Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975) was born in Rich Hill, about two hours south of Kansas City. Although King questioned Wieman’s naturalism, Wieman’s approach, as in his 1946 book, “The Source of Human Good,” was more optimistic than Niebuhr’s.
   One might say Missouri theologians were King’s book ends.

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800. 100113 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
 An evolving view of God

Can you name the book, both praised and derided by religionists since it was published 150 years ago—Nov. 24, 1859, to be exact? The last word in its long final sentence is a clue:
   “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that . . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
   The book is On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, who was awed and amazed by nature. 
   He had studied theology. His “Creator” was not the God of those who taught that God made animal and plant species so perfect from the beginning that they could not evolve. 
   While Darwin was not the first to believe in evolution, his book, with unprecedented documentation, showed that the competition for survival in changing environments naturally led to “descent with modification.”
   Darwin was struck with the enormous struggle and suffering in the world out of which an astonishing profusion of life forms emerged. 
   Ten years earlier the poet Tennyson had written about “nature, red in tooth and claw,” a phrase that was later used to characterize Darwin’s views. 
   The parallel idea of the survival of the fittest is sometimes used to justify the suffering inevitably part of the competition in economic capitalism.
   The problem of undeserved suffering has often been used to argue against belief in God. If God is all-powerful and all-good, why does he permit personal horrors such as the rape of a 6-year old girl, public disasters like 9/11 and natural catastrophes like tsunamis?
   Why does one animal have to rip another apart for food, eaten alive, when the Creator could have provided all necessary nutrients in ground water?
   Theologians have wrestled with many answers, but the one that fits best with Darwin may be the idea that God works through the natural and moral world not by initial perfection but by evolving process.
   Fifty years ago another book on evolution appeared in English, The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Like Darwin, Teilhard was a scientist. He was also a Jesuit.
   Teilhard’s book argues that God pulls matter upward through evolution. Even though some species fail and become extinct along the way, various forms of life tend to become more complex and capable of higher and higher awareness of God.
   Do evolutionary or anti-evolutionary views engender more awe? This question may be more interesting than arguing about which is true.

CRES WEB-ONLY NOTES 
   The phrase trimmed from the quotation of Darwin is "whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity".
    The term "Creator" does not appear in the first edition of Origins, Nov 24, 1859, but does in the second edition six weeks later, January 10, 1860, and all subsequent editions.
   Teilhard was a geologist and paleonthropologist. He participated in the Peking Man discoveries.The book was not published until after his death. The English translation followed the original French edition.

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799. 100106 THE STAR’S PRINT HEADLINE: 
Can we apply "Avatar' message?

The science fiction movie “Avatar” borrows themes from many religions. More importantly, it poses a great question of faith.
   *Of the many borrowed themes, here are two. The word avatar comes from Hinduism and literally means “a descent.” An avatar is a god descending into a human form as a partial manifestation of the divine. 
   In a way, the movie insults this traditional usage. In the film it is a human, not a god, who descends. The film implies that the descended form of the blue-skinned race on a distant moon is inferior to the human. 
   Or perhaps rather than insult this is irony since the avatar term is used by the RDA corporation, a colonizing power determined at any price to extract a valuable mineral called—get this—unobtainium.
   Hindu gods, particularly Vishnu, become avatars to save the order of the universe. The movie suggests something is terribly wrong with a rapacious greed that leads to destroying the world of nature and other civilizations, and the movie’s avatar averts ultimate doom.
   *The movie’s Tree of Souls recalls the Norse story of the tree Yggdrasil, an example of a tree supporting the cosmos found in many traditions. Its destruction signals the collapse of the universe. Scholars call such trees the axis mundi, the center of the world. The earth itself shook in the Christian story of the tree of crucifixion, destroying the old for new life.
   In the movie, the avatar’s saving the Tree of Souls from human assault prevented unrecoverable catastrophe.
   *The big religious question the movie raises can be put this way: Will we see creation hierarchically or ecologically—governed from above or through mutual interdependence?
   The movie preaches the latter, that a network of energy flows through all things, that disturbing natural balance leads to disaster.
   Christianity has sometimes been called a religion of colonizers, despoilers and decimators of native peoples. However, Christian insistence on stewardship of nature, rather than dominion over it, may effectively respond to that charge. Christian environmentalism is huge.
   New technologies may minimize environmental problems, but the real solution may be a spiritual reorientation. The 2001 Kansas City Gifts of Pluralism interfaith conference declaration contained these words: “Nature is to be respected, not just controlled. Nature is a process that includes us, not a product external to us. . . . Our proper attitude toward nature is awe, not utility.”
   The 3-D fantasy world of the movie was gorgeous. But will it remind us to thrill to the beauties and wonders of the real world, and to cherish it?

CRES WEB-ONLY NOTES 
   1. With all due respect for New York Times columnist Thomas F. Friedman who writes repeatedly about the need for the U.S. “green” energy innovatation, the awareness of the human-like creatures in “Avatar” that all things are connected may provide a better path to the future than merely economic arguments.
   2. *Flying creatures carrying humans are part of religious traditions. Buraq was the winged steed that carried Muhammad on the night journey to Jerusalem and Heaven. Perseus rode the winged horse Pegasus. Some of the most beautiful 3-D effects in the movie come from flying creatures tamed by their passangers.
   3. “The Earth’s biosphere is the most complicated manifestation of the laws of nature that we know of.” --Dennis Overbye, science writer in the NYTimes.