To start off a new blog, and just about a new year and a new decade. A review of the role of religion in the last decade seems almost apt, and indeed it is something that has been done in The Guardian recently with various contributors giving their views on the subject this week.
It seems that the noughties have started and ended with Islamic extremism, with the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Pentagon and the failed attack that crashed down in Pennsylvania, and most recently with the failed Detroit terrorist attack by suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a recent graduate in engineering in UCL, and a bright student of a British school in Nigeria. Clearly someone who had an abundance of potential to provide the world with good rather than calculated evil. In between there have been terror attacks in Bali, London, and in Madrid, as well as numerous other foiled attempts that have taken place.
It would of course be disingenuous to suggest that it is mere Islamic extremism that has provided the backdrop for all of this discussion. We have also had the rise and the fall of the power yielded by the Evangelical lobby in US presidential elections between the years 2000, and 2008 which provided us with the presidency of George W. Bush for 8 years, and two wars in the Middle East, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq as we all know.
Likewise this decade has prompted radical changes in the Holy Land and in the Israel – Palestine conflict with extreme forms of Judaism and Islam both thriving. Conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians reached all high in the Second Intifada during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the Israel – Lebanon War of 2006, and Operation Cast Lead in 2008. It has also prompted the construction of the Separation Barrier in the West Bank, but also the pulling out of settlement in the Gaza Strip. It has prompted the rise of Hamas to the Gaza statelet, and it has prompted huge questions about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people. Conflict in this region hasn’t only been confined to Arab – Israeli conflict, but also within the State of Israel itself with Orthodox Jews struggling both against the liberalising of the Shabbat and compromises in the Secular – Religious status quo (which at the start of the Israeli state defined key areas including that of marriage and kosher food where religious compromises must be made), and the rise of Jewish Christianity within the State.
We’ve also had the question of homosexual clergy and the ordination of female bishops, with the ordination of Gene Robinson to the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, and the likely ordination of Mary Glasspool the first openly lesbian bishop in the Anglican Communion to the diocese of Los Angeles. We’ve also had the Anglican realignment, and Evangelical Anglicans forming the group GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) and one of the messiest Lambeth conferences in a long time.
In addition to this, in Ireland we have seen the damage and hurt that a minority in the Roman Catholic church brought about through the horrific abuse described in the Ferns, Murphy and Ryan Reports into the subject of clerical child abuse and the questions about how the Roman Catholic church can move forward rage in the media. In a bigger scale in Rome, we have the ongoing struggle between liberal and conservative views in the church, and how the Roman Catholic Church has dealt with AIDS and HIV in the African continent.
This decade has also brought about many challenges in terms of religious belief in society from wearing religious symbols in schools in France, wearing crucifixes at work in Britain, expressing your beliefs in public, amongst other things. In the UK it marked the beginning of the Christian Institute, a legal organisation set up to inform people about what is happening in respect to civil liberties and the Christian faith and an organisation set up in order to help defend people in court when such situations should arise.
Indeed religion has made the news from the big international scene to the news that takes place locally. The question we have to ask ourselves despite all the bad news is there anything good that religion can bring to our societies? Having read the above it is patently obvious why people can come up with slogans such as “Science flies you to the moon, while religion flies you into buildings” and indeed to many of us it may seem appealing.
This perhaps brings us to the next stage of our story, with the re-emergence of militant atheism through the documentaries (The Root of all Evil on Channel 4) and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins in 2006, and God is Not Great by author Christopher Hitchens in 2007. These influences and others have provoked discussion about God, religion, Christianity and the role of any of these in the Western world in particular, and noticeably in Ireland as well from many of the people I speak to on a daily basis. External to these influences are the emergence of organised atheism both in Ireland with groups such as Atheist Ireland headed by Michael Nugent with several aims to provide a secular constitution for Ireland, and to remove the current blasphemy law from the statute books. Likewise the Humanist Association of Ireland have called for religious oaths to be removed. Atheist Ireland also allows for the meeting and the discussion of atheism and secular values amongst people in Ireland and beyond. Likewise the emergence of atheist societies in UCC (University College Cork), UCD (University College Dublin), and in NUI Galway.
Those who are reading who have some form of a faith might feel that I am being highly unreasonable objecting that the news mostly covers what is negative. This is true, but the presence of religion in the news provides us an opportunity to present our beliefs, and to present views in a way that we never had the opportunity of doing before. It also allows ourselves to show others, that despite the fact that the hard-line extremists get the news headlines that there is a role for religion, and indeed a huge benefit to be offered from religious activity and charity throughout the world.
New discussion on the role of religion and science particularly organisations such as Christians in Science, and The BioLogos Foundation provide an interesting perspective to help believers to defend their views more clearly amongst those who would be sceptical, and to present an alternative to the new atheism being advocated in Western society. Interesting, and exciting times are ahead with some parts of the world professing new belief, and other parts where it is radically declining there is always a place for our view to be heard.
