On the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation it seems we are all Catholics again.

(That's ironic hyperbole for the confused.)

According to this study, most people on some level know that good works are actually important to salvation and part of the journey to salvation.

Anyone who denies this has to do an incredible amount of hair-splitting while engaging in unconvincing contortions.

Not that there aren't some people - usually on the interent - who aren't up to the task.

//Today, half of American Protestants say that both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven (52%); the same number believe that in addition to the Bible, Christians need guidance from church teachings and traditions, according to two studies released today by the Pew Research Center.

The numbers don’t change in Western Europe. In Luther’s home country of Germany, 61 percent of Protestants believe good deeds are needed for salvation. In John Calvin’s Switzerland, 57 percent agree, as do 47 percent in Abraham Kuyper’s Holland.//

Here's another finding that gives scientific support to a droll comment I have been making for decades:

//However, most Americans know the two aren’t exactly the same. When asked to define Protestantism in their own words, a plurality of adults said “not Catholic” (32%) or generally Christian (12%).//

You shall know that you are Protestants by what you protest.

Interesting...

...but I think that Goldman actually does believe in "unmerited grace."

What is the election of Israel, after all, as God's chosen except unmerited grace?

//What is the difference between Christianity and Judaism? It isn’t love versus law, or works versus faith; those are canards. It isn’t Incarnation as such; my late teacher Michael Wyschogrod showed that Incarnation is a Jewish idea, specifically that God’s presence (Shekhinah) dwells in the flesh and blood of the people Israel (Christians, he quipped, concentrate that into one single Jew). It isn’t even the different persons of God in the Trinity. Judaism teaches different attributes of God, particularly the Attribute of Justice and the Attribute of Mercy, although we do not of course regard them as different “persons.”

The great gulf fixed between Jews and Christians is the notion of unmerited grace.  Unmerited grace is meaningless in the Jewish context. It isn’t that YHWH is a more demanding deity than Jesus of Nazareth. Jews are expected to be God’s partners, and Imitatio Dei for Jews means participating in the continuing work of creation. We do not wait for the Kingdom of Heaven; we build heaven into the minutia of daily life. Performance of the mitzvoth (commandments) is not a means to accumulate sufficient points to win a place in heaven; it is the construction of heaven on earth. The Sabbath is a foretaste of the World to Come, a portion of eternity separated from quotidian time.//

Water is wet, the sky is blue and...

...religious people give more to charity.

Here's the story:

Just as America is often divided between red and blue and rich and poor, a new study shows a similar gap between Americans who give more generously to charity and those who don’t. But the study says almost as much about Americans’ religious participation as it does our willingness to give.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy released a fascinating survey this week on how (and how much) America donates to charitable organizations. One of the most interesting findings shows that those who tend to give the most live in more religious areas. A substantial portion of giving in the U.S., you see, comes in the form of tithing to churches. When religion is taken out of the equation, the charitable landscape alters considerably.

And:

Take away churches as charities, however, and red states no longer dominate the world of donations. Instead, New England – a region that leans Democratic, with far fewer religiously affiliated Americans but with more affluent residents – catapults toward the top.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that the South gives roughly 5.2% of its discretionary income to charity– including both religious and non-religious groups – while New England only gives 4%. But if churches are excluded, the South’s percentage drops to 0.9% and New England’s only drops to 1.4%. New York state would be second in the country in giving if religion was removed from the equation, while Pennsylvania would jump from No. 40 into the top 5.

The last two paragraphs seem to be misleading. How are we to know that if religion was "removed from the equation" the charitable states wouldn't give to non-religious charities? Clearly we know no such thing.

Another point is that what religion has going for it is that it creates and sustains a community, which, presumably, is conducive to charitable giving. What the statistics seem to indicate is that when we "remove religion from the equation," some of the charitable impulses are redirected toward non-religious charities, but the overall effect is a reduction of charitable giving.

So, isn't that really the lesson - the less religion there is, the less there is a community, and the less charity we see?

It looks like Romney has good "message control"...

...better than his opponents.

From the Washington Post:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was confronted at a town hall meeting here Monday by a young man who read from a book of scripture published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and asked Romney whether he agreed with his church’s one-time belief that interracial marriage was a sin.

Romney, who is on the cusp of becoming the first Mormon ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination, became visibly agitated with the man’s line of questioning. The former Massachusetts governor replied to his question with a terse “No.” Later, Romney said that he would talk only about the practices of his faith, not its doctrines.

The questioner, Bret Hatch, 28, a local supporter of Rep. Ron Paul’s, read from typed notes as he asked Romney whether he agreed with a verse from Moses 7:8 from the “Pearl of Great Price.” As he began citing the verse, Romney interrupted: “I’m sorry, we’re just not going to have a discussion about religion in my view. But if you have a question, I’ll be happy to answer your question.”

Hatch asked his question. “If you become president,” he asked, “do you believe it’s a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black?”

“No,” Romney said. “Next question.”

A few minutes later, after another voter asked him about his ability to connect to average Americans, Romney returned to the subject of his faith.

“This gentleman wanted to talk about the doctrines of my religion,” Romney said, referencing Hatch. “I’ll talk about the practices of my faith.”

He went on to describe his work as a volunteer lay pastor for his Mormon congregation in the Boston area. “That gave me the occasion to work with people on a very personal basis that were dealing with unemployment, with marital difficulties, with health difficulties of their own and with their kids,” Romney said.

Cool Chart.

Here is the link.

Gospel Hoax

A defense against the claim that the Secret Gospel of Mark was forged.

The proprietor of the blog site that links to the defense is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and believes that James "the Brother of Christ" induced the belief in Jesus' resurrection because of his family resemblance to the Messiah.  This makes him a colleague of Bart Ehrman, professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Screw how people dress - this really deserves an application of "cultural imperialism."

This Steve Sailer post on the rise of human sacrifice in Uganda and the fact that the Ugandans have an "anti-sacrifice task force" makes me reflect (a) not all religions are equal and (b) how close we are to "the primitive."

Sacrificing Religions

"Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals begins."

This story puts me in mind of Julian the Apostate - who attempted to undermine Christianity and return the Roman Empire to its traditional Pagan religious traditions.  An essential part of this restoration included a devotion to animal sacrifice, such that Julian the Apostate was also called Julian the Apostate, and he was often described as being covered with the gore of the multitude of animals that he sacrificed to his pagan gods.

The article descrives the festival to the Hindu Goddess Goddhimai as follows:

The world's biggest animal sacrifice began in Nepal today with the killing of the first of more than 250,000 animals as part of a Hindu festival in the village of Bariyapur, near the border with India.


The event, which happens every five years, began with the decapitation of thousands of buffalo, killed in honour of Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.

With up to a million worshippers on the roads near the festival grounds, this year's fair seems more popular than ever, despite vocal protests from animals rights groups who have called for it to be banned. "It is the traditional way, " explained 45-year old Manoj Shah, a Nepali driver who has been attending the event since he was six, "If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled." .

Crowds thronged the roads and camped out in the open, wrapped in blankets against the cool mist. The festivities included a ferris wheel, fortune-telling robots and stalls broadcasting music and offering tea and sugary snacks.

As dawn broke, the fair officially opened with the sacrifice of two rats, two pigeons, a pig, a lamb and a rooster in the main temple, to cheers of "Long live Gadhimai" from spectators pushing against each other for a better view.

In the main event, 250 appointed residents with traditional kukri knives began their task of decapitating more than 10,000 buffalo in a dusty enclosure guarded by high walls and armed police.

Frightened calves galloped around in vain as the men, wearing red bandanas and armbands, pursued them and chopped off their heads. Banned from entering the animal pen, hundreds of visitors scrambled up the three-metre walls to catch a glimpse of the carnage.

The dead beasts will be sold to companies who will profit from the sale of the meat, bones and hide. Organisers will funnel the proceeds into development of the area, including the temple upkeep.

On the eve of the event, protesters made a final plea to organisers by cracking open coconuts in a nearby temple as a symbolic sacrifice. "It is cruel and inhumane. We've always been a superstitious country, but I don't think sacrifice has to be part of the Hindu religion," said the protest organiser, Pramada Shah

The campaign has the support of the French actor Brigitte Bardot, who has petitioned the Nepalese prime minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal, about the issue. But the government, which donated £36,500 to the event, has shown no sign of discontinuing the centuries-old tradition. An attempt by the previous government to cut the budget for animal sacrifice provoked street protests.


Chandan Dev Chaudhary, a Hindu priest, said he was pleased with the festival's high turnout and insisted tradition had to be kept. "The goddess needs blood," he said. "Then that person can make his wishes come true."

I find this interesting as a practical example of the world from which Christianity emerged.