“My husband is suffering because he is a Christian. He is suffering because he is an American. Yet, his own government … has abandoned him. Don’t we owe it to him as a nation to stand up for his human rights, for his freedom?”
– Naghmeh Abedini, the wife of Iranian-American pastor Saeed Abedini, who is currently in prison in Iran, at a House hearing.
(RNS) He’s a man with a ton of titles — Prince of Peace, Son of God, Shepherd of Souls — but now Jesus has one more: the biggest name in human history. Ever.
So say the authors of a startling new book, “Who’s Bigger: Where Historical Figures Really Rank,” which tries to settle, once and for all, the question of who’s who.
It’s a work of “culturometrics,” a fancy term to describe quantitative data analysis applied to individuals in society the same way Sabermetrics tracks performance in baseball, pundits aggregate polls in elections, and algorithms rule computer search engines.
“Bigger” is a complex collection of lists and rankings, but none is more provocative than its Top 100: Jesus is No. 1, Adolf Hitler is No. 7, everyone is overwhelmingly white and 97 are male.
But keep your blood pressure in check. “Bigger does not mean better,” said co-author Steven Skiena, a computer science professor at Stony Brook University where he heads the Data Science Laboratory.
Left, Steven Skiena photo courtesy Stony Brook University, right, Charles B. Ward photo Stony Brook University This image is available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. To research “Bigger,” Skiena and Charles Ward, an engineer on the ranking team at Google, created a complex amalgam of measures. To establish their “significance” ranking, they assessed more than 800,000 names, calculated scores of celebrity and achievement or gravitas and then factored in how long, and how long ago, someone lived.
Hence the Top 10 names need no introduction:
1. Jesus
2. Napoleon
3. Muhammad
4. William Shakespeare
5. Abraham Lincoln
6. George Washington
7. Adolf Hitler
8. Aristotle
9. Alexander the Great
10. Thomas Jefferson
Where things get really curious is moving down the list:
– Protestant reformer Martin Luther (No. 17) is just above Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Reformer Martin Luther (center) works closely with several colleagues in translating the first German-language edition of the Bible. Engraving by J.C. Buttre. He was listed No. 17 in a new ranking of historical figures. Religion News Service file photo This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. – Elvis Presley (No. 69) is notched between Socrates and William the Conqueror.
– King Arthur (No. 85), who may be a myth, tops Michelangelo.
– Only Queen Elizabeth I (No. 13), Queen Victoria (No. 16), and St. Joan of Arc (No. 95) make the Top 100; whether the list includes anyone who is black depends on how you classify St. Augustine of Hippo (No. 72), the North African/Roman theologian of the early Christian church.
– President Obama barely missed the top 100, coming in at No. 111, but ahead of the Virgin Mary (No. 127).
Researchers say there was no nefarious plot to exclude women and blacks. But in centuries past, those two groups were barred from historically significant roles, their social contributions unrecorded by others.
Today, to get a high ranking in Wikipedia, with long entries, frequent edits and numerous links to other important people and events, a woman has to be so much stronger than a man, “it’s like they have to be four IQ points higher,” said Skiena.
Wikipedia and Google ngrams (a searchable collection of words in scanned English language books) are the basis of the “Bigger” research — and also the source of its bias toward the Anglo-American, English-language version of history in books and online. Relying on Wikipedia, where only 15 percent of editors are women and user-generated data can be riddled with errors, is also a risky choice, critics have noted.
This methodology also crimped the authors’ ability, for example, to rank the Dalai Lama. The current leader of Tibetan Buddhism was often listed by his official title, the 14th Dalai Lama, which is a status, not an individual, in the data. That meant his ranking couldn’t be calculated.
For the researchers, significance is not a value judgment. The authors examined people’s reputations as memes that evolve across time, said Skiena. They traced the evolution of the term “meme” to famed evolutionary zoologist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins (No. 1,630 in their top 2,000).
“We measured how successfully they are propagating their meme through the course of history,” said Skiena.
Jesus is the indisputable leader, with his name appearing once in every 10,000 words in the ngrams.
Likewise, founders of religions are highly significant people. Skiena noted that could decrease across time as the proportion of writing in English is no longer focused primarily on faith or philosophy, as it was in ancient days.
But there may yet be more popes in the Top 100 one day than just the two listed currently — St. Peter (No. 65) and Pope John Paul II (No. 91) — because contemporary popes are living longer than their predecessors.
Other religious figures in the top 100:
34. Paul the Apostle (New Testament author, missionary)
52. Gautama Buddha (central figure of Buddhism)
57. Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism)
(RNS) Joseph Smith founded the Mormon faith. He was listed No. 57 in a new ranking of historical figures. RNS file photo courtesy of the Museum of Church History and Art/The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. 89. Ali (son-in-law of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad)
90. St. Thomas Aquinas (Catholic theologian)
99. John Calvin (Protestant theologian)
Wish the list were different? Their “Who’s Bigger” app for Apple iPhone and iPad allows people to compare their own choices with those of Skiena and Ward.
But neither Pope Francis, Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2013, nor Miley Cyrus, a Time finalist, will top the charts. His election and her twerking episode both grabbed headlines after the authors had finished their research.
KRE/AMB END GROSSMAN
Click on any photo below to view slideshow.
ROME (RNS) Now in its 10th edition, the annual wall calendar best known for its black-and-white photos of attractive priests continues to spark grumbles of controversy in Italy.
Officially, it’s called “Il Calendario Romano” — The Roman Calendar — but it is popularly referred to as the “Roman beefcake calendar.”
According to Piero Pazzi, the Venice-based photographer who takes the photos and produces the calendar each year, almost all of the men he photographs — many of them in front of churches or religious monuments — are priests or seminarians. But the religious connotations end there.
According to Italian media reports, the calendar has become a kind of icon for groups ranging from female Protestant clergy to gay men. Some critics claim it projects an inappropriate image for the clergy.
But Pazzi, who produces other wall calendars, including one showing cats, brushes aside those complaints.
“It contains a great deal of important information for tourists in Rome, but I know that if I printed that by itself on a piece of paper nobody would look at it,” he said. “It’s about marketing. It’s a souvenir, not a statement of any kind.”
The 2014 edition of the calendar, which is not produced in cooperation with any religious institution, costs 10 euros (about $14) at most Vatican-area gift shops or online.
(RNS) In his first Advent address, Pope Francis directed Christians to be guided by the “Magnificat,” Mary’s song of praise for the coming Christ child. She proclaims that God has “lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:52-53). This past Tuesday, Pope Francis heeded his own exhortation by releasing a video message calling for an end to hunger as part of a worldwide “wave of prayer.”
Hundreds of Christian organizations across the globe participated in the “wave of prayer,” which was organized by Caritas International, a confederation of Catholic charities in the Vatican.
“We are in front of a global scandal of around 1 billion people who still suffer from hunger today,” Pope Francis said in his message. “We cannot look the other way.” The wave began at noon on the Pacific island of Samoa and proceeded west with people of faith from each subsequent time zone participating at noon their time.
Participation in this global prayer wave spread well beyond the Catholic world. It drew support from across the ideological and theological spectrum. Young evangelicals prayed with Episcopal grandmothers. Protestants prayed with Roman Catholics.
In Washington, members of Congress from both parties held a noon prayer service with Circle of Protection, a group of 65 heads of denominations, relief and development agencies, and other Christian organizations.
Pope Francis’ call for prayer to end hunger could not have come at a more important time. While the world is near cutting hunger in the developing world in half by 2015, one in eight people all over the world still suffer from chronic hunger.
Video courtesy Caritas Internationalis via YouTube
In our country, however, you do not see this global exodus from hunger. Rather, it is growing. Today, 17 million children will go hungry because their parents can’t afford to feed them one or more days each month. Nearly a million veterans who sacrificed so much in service to our country depend on food stamps so they can eat. Remarkably, at a time when one in four Americans say they have struggled to put food on the table, Congress has chosen to slash one of the most effective anti-hunger programs in the country, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps.
Congress’ recent cuts to SNAP will eliminate 10 million meals per day that American families and veterans have been depending on. Nearly 5 million of those meals would have gone to children — the equivalent of eliminating daily meals for every child in South Carolina, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, and Mississippi.
These recent cuts to SNAP eliminate more meals than what Catholic Charities, churches, food pantries, and all other charities combined are able to provide with our already stretched resources. Churches and food pantries would need to more than double what they raise to fill the gap left by Congress’ cuts to SNAP. And now Congress is considering additional cuts that would be four to five times as large!
Such actions should be anathema to all Americans, and especially to Christians. Seeking to balance budgets on the backs of hungry children and veterans does not represent American values. It clearly doesn’t heed the gospel call to lift up the lowly and feed the hungry.
The Rev. David Beckmann is president of Bread for the World and a World Food Prize laureate. Photo courtesy Bread for the World This image is available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. It’s time for a new direction. That is why Christians are coming together, not just to pray but also to witness to our leaders that we expect more from them. We believe our capacity to achieve is greater than the obstacles that are before us. Caring for the hungry in our midst is not an unattainable dream; it is the least we are called to do.
(The Rev. Larry Snyder is president of Catholic Charities USA. The Rev. David Beckmann is president of Bread for the World and a World Food Prize laureate. )
YS/AMB END BECKMANN
(RNS) The crowd hushed, the lights dimmed and the National Cathedral’s bourdon bell chimed for three minutes — each minute to commemorate 10,000 of the 30,000 lives lost to gun violence in the U.S. last year.
The Thursday (Dec. 12) service marked nearly a year since a gunman took 26 lives at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Americans from a spectrum of faiths prayed, sang and testified about a gun violence epidemic they said is poisoning the nation’s soul.
“We gather today to remember and to honor,” said the Rev. Mel Kawakami, senior minister of Newtown United Methodist Church, ”to work toward a world where there are no more school shootings as there have been in 16 other communities since Sandy Hook.”
Carole King played and sang “In the Name of Love,” on the grand piano before the pulpit, setting a somber but hopeful tone. Pianist Christopher Betts and violinist Sonya Hayes played John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Lennon was shot to death 33 years ago.
Survivors of shootings and parents and siblings of those who didn’t survive said elected officials must be pushed to pass legislation to keep guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat to others.
New Yorker Dan Gross, now the head of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, testified that 16 years ago his brother, Matthew, was gravely injured by the gunman who began shooting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and his brother’s friend killed.
“To honor him, I’ve devoted the rest of my life to preventing the kind of tragedy that my family experienced that day,” he said. ”I will not be silent.”
“We will not be silent,” the crowd responded.
YS/AMB END MARKOE
(RNS) The Annenberg Foundation has paid $530,000 for 24 sacred Native American artifacts, for the sole purpose of returning them to the two tribes who had tried but failed to keep them off the auction block.
The announcement Wednesday (Dec. 11) surprised many who had followed the controversy surrounding the artifcacts, which were included in the sale of 170 Native American items at a Paris auction house. A lawyer for the Hopi and San Carlos Apache tribes had argued before a French court that as sacred objects, used in religious ceremonies, the artifacts should not be sold.
But a U.S. law that limits trafficking in Native American items holds no force abroad, and a French judge ruled on Dec. 6 that the auction could go forward. That is when Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, the vice president and director of the Los Angeles-based foundation, decided to bid on the 24 objects, and return them to the tribes if successful.
“These are not trophies to have on one’s mantel; they are truly sacred works for the Native Americans,” Weingarten said in a statement issued by the foundation.
“They do not belong in auction houses or private collections. It gives me immense satisfaction to know that they will be returned home to their rightful owners, the Native Americans.”
Hopi cultural leader Sam Tenakhongva said in the same statement that the tribe hopes the Annenberg decision to intervene “sets an example for others that items of significant cultural and religious value can only be properly cared for by those vested with the proper knowledge and responsibility.”
“They simply cannot be put up for sale,” he said.
The Annenberg Foundation reported an endowment of $1.53 billion in 2011, according to its website, and gave out $104 million for charitable purposes in the fiscal year that ended in June 2011. Its grants are given to a wide range of causes, including the environment and education.
KRE/AMB END MARKOE
(RNS) He came into office riding a wave of good will and bringing a message of hope and change. He was honored by his traditional adversaries and awarded global accolades just months after taking charge amid a crisis of historic scope.
Left, Pope Francis passes a crucifix as he walks down steps during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican Dec. 4. Photo by Paul Haring, courtesy of Catholic New Service. Right, President Barack Obama talks with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran during a phone call in the Oval Office, Sept. 27, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) This image is available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. Sound familiar? Maybe the president (Obama) has a few tips for the pope (Francis).
Francis’ trajectory from near anonymity to the heights of power is remarkably similar to Obama’s. But can the pontiff avoid the pitfalls that have dogged the president?
Obama’s current status could certainly be read as a cautionary tale, with his approval ratings mired in the low 40s after remaining persistently strong — though they never approached the stratospheric 92 percent favorability that Francis currently enjoys.
Yet the higher you fly, the farther you fall, and the more painful the landing. “The heady romance between Pope Francis and the world is still in its honeymoon period,” University of Notre Dame’s Candida Moss warned in a Politico essay this week after the pontiff was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
True, the magazine’s encomium is not quite the Nobel Peace Prize, which Obama won in 2009 at the same point in his fledgling administration. (The president was also Time’s “Person of the Year” in both 2008 and 2012.) But some of the reactions to it were similar: too much, too soon, too little substance.
“We ooh and ah at the celebrity nature of the Francis papacy in much the same way the world went gaga over Princess Diana,” blogger Rick Moran wrote at the American Thinker. “She, too, was largely about symbolism, but in the end, she accomplished very little of substance. She brought comfort to the afflicted and publicity to some causes, but as far as concrete change, nothing much happened. Francis is in danger of experiencing something similar.”
Indeed, like Obama, Francis could be facing some of the same perils of sky-high expectations that can lead to dashed hopes, in part because the pope is facing some of the same dynamics the president has — namely, a shrinking centrist core and a polarized polity with increasingly vocal fringes.
For example, as Francis has continued to criticize free-market economics, religious dogmatism, and the pomp often associated with Catholic practices, some Catholic conservatives have grown increasingly strident in their opposition.
“Just as President Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a disaster for the Catholic Church,” Fox News editor Adam Shaw, a Catholic, wrote earlier this month in a widely circulated blast at the pontiff’s efforts to move beyond the church’s internal ideological battles and engage the world with a positive message.
Moreover, Francis is also facing entrenched interests as he attempts to reform the Roman Curia — a chief reason the cardinals elected him last March — much as Obama faces a persistent foe in the GOP’s Tea Party faction. As one commentator put it on Twitter, Francis “may be Obama, but the Curia is the Republican House. No fundamental change is possible.”
The criticisms and reservations from the Catholic left can also be sharp, and mirror the sense of disappointment and disenchantment heard from Obama’s liberal allies when he failed to change the nation as much as they wanted.
“If (Pope Francis) wants to sustain Catholics’ interest and excitement, the time is fast approaching when he must deliver something tangible,” opined the liberal National Catholic Reporter in an editorial last month on expectations that Francis would begin to implement policies that reflect the sentiments of most Catholics.
To be sure, Francis is the pope, not a president. He is the chief executive and legislator and jurist all in one.
For all that, however, popes are not the autocrats some think they are (or should be) and Francis has to win over his own troops in order to effect the change he envisions. He will also need to appoint leaders who reflect his views — a new White House can make more appointments more quickly than a new pontificate — and he will need public approval to aid him.
But will he have the time to make changes without deflating the hopes of those who are giving the church a second look after decades of scandal and crisis? Obama, at least, seems enamored of Francis, citing the pope in his speeches and saying he has been “hugely impressed with the pope’s pronouncements.”
“He’s also someone who is first and foremost thinking about how to embrace people as opposed to push them away,” Obama told CNBC in October.
Maybe the president was speaking out of envy as much as admiration — and maybe the Vatican should worry about the pope’s fans as much as his critics.
KRE/AMB END GIBSON