Will the PBS series ‘Wolf Hall’ tarnish St. Thomas More’s halo?

Anton Lesser as Thomas More in Wolf Hall. Photo courtesy Ed Miller/Playground & Company Pictures for Masterpiece/BBC This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

(RNS) Sir Thomas More loses his head in this Sunday’s episode (April 26) of the acclaimed PBS historical drama, “Wolf Hall,” which is not much of a spoiler since that’s what infamously happened to More in 1535 at the hands of King Henry VIII.

The real suspense now is whether More will also lose his halo.

Not officially, of course: Thomas More remains a Roman Catholic saint by dint of his refusal to accept Henry’s plot to have his first marriage annulled.  The onetime Lord Chancellor of England also opposed Henry’s power play against the pope, which led to the establishment of the Church of England.

More was formally canonized in 1935, on the 400th anniversary of his execution.

But in these past decades the secular world was also burnishing More’s reputation by turning him into the contemporary standard-bearer of the righteous man, wielding only his conscience and religious principles against the power of the state — the “Man for All Seasons,” as the 1966 Academy Award-winning film (and earlier play) depicted him.

“I die His Majesty’s good servant, but God’s first,” More declares in playwright Robert Bolt’s famous line, a riff on More’s own last words.

Yet what “Wolf Hall” does — and the reason such an intense debate has erupted over the series — is to engage in some bold revisionism by depicting More not as a saint but as “a heresy-hunting, scrupulous prig,” as the Catholic writer George Weigel put it.

Conversely, More’s nemesis, Thomas Cromwell — who maneuvered to supplant More as the king’s chief lawyer and political operative, and became a Protestant icon — is now, in Weigel’s words, “the sensible, pragmatic man of affairs who gets things done, even if a few heads get cracked (or detached) in the process.”

This new-and-improved version of Cromwell (not to be confused with his 17th-century Puritan descendant Oliver Cromwell) is in fact very much the hero of the series, which airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET, just as he is in the best-selling 2009 novel by Hilary Mantel that the BBC show is based on.

(RNS) Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in “Wolf Hall” For use with RNS-WOLF-SPLAINER, transmitted April 9, 2015. Photo courtesy Giles Keyte/Playground & Company Pictures for MASTERPIECE/BBC. This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

It’s an approach that irritates many scholars and critics, but the debate poses a special threat to today’s defenders of religious freedom, especially American culture warriors on the right who have taken More as the symbol of their fight.

“(T)o me it is impossible to miss the allusions to current debates about rational government and religious belief,” wrote Mark Movsesian, a professor at St. John’s University School of Law,  in the conservative journal First Things. “The message, for religious liberty, is not a congenial one.”

“The fact that this hatchet job on Thomas More appears in an impeccably well-done BBC production — surely the gold standard in upper-middle-class entertainment — shows how fast our culture is changing, and how much work defenders of religious liberty have before them,” he wrote.

Indeed, in 2012 the U.S. Catholic bishops picked More as a poster saint for their annual “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign, aimed in large part at pressuring the White House to change a requirement that religious employers provide free birth control coverage in their health care policies.

Cardinal Francis George was a leader in that fight, and when he died last week, the former Chicago archbishop was himself compared to More.

Yet rarely is anyone, in today’s politics, or in history for that matter, as simple as we might like.

In fact, when the American bishops were hailing the use of More in their religious freedom campaign, George took the microphone at their meeting to warn his colleagues “to be careful how we use” More. The reason: “He was not a tolerant person. … He himself put people to death because they did not accept the truth of the Catholic faith.”

So were More and Cromwell saints to emulate? Or sinners to castigate?

Even More’s ardent fans acknowledge he was far from perfect and, as Villanova law school professor Michael Moreland put it,  More “generally shared in the prejudices of his age and was complicit in practices … that we would today regard as morally odious.”

Among those practices were burning alleged heretics at the stake — six such executions took place while More was Henry’s chancellor, from 1529-32, and More had a direct hand in at least three of those.

More’s agents also succeeded in apprehending the famous Bible translator William Tyndale, who was brutally killed a year after More’s own death.

Torture was another common practice, one that “Wolf Hall” shows More employing quite sadistically, and More’s vicious broadsides against heretics (“the devil’s stinking martyrs”) undoubtedly contributed to the persecution of many.

Yet More denied that he ever tortured anyone, and his record was certainly distorted by centuries of Protestant counterpolemics.

Largely absent from “Wolf Hall” is the charming and witty More, a renowned humanist and clear-eyed observer of the sins of his age; a father who insisted on educating his daughters just as he did his sons, and who kept a menagerie of exotic animals.

“More was neither blood-soaked nor a hypocrite, but he was a man of his times, not of ours,” the eminent Cambridge University church historian Eamon Duffy put it in The Tablet of London. Some revision is needed but the new portrait, Duffy complains, “is too dark.”

In “Wolf Hall,” Mantel — who was raised Catholic but is now a sharp critic of the church — seeks to rehabilitate Cromwell to such an extent that she, and the series, turn him into an overly sympathetic protagonist: a man of common birth who overcame an abusive childhood to become a loving family man and successful lawyer. Saddened by the injustice he sees around him, he does what he can to mitigate the violence and instill a sense of Protestant moderation and reason into the headstrong monarch.

Except that’s hardly the truth either, which makes distinguished historians such as Simon Schama grind their teeth.

Rather than “a much-maligned, misunderstood pragmatist from the school of hard knocks who got precious little thanks for doing Henry VIII’s dirty work,” Schama wrote in the Financial Times, Cromwell was “a detestably self-serving, bullying monster who perfected state terror in England, cooked the evidence, and extracted confessions by torture.”

Cromwell “was the Islamic State of his day,” Dominic Selwood wrote in The Telegraph, a man “whose record for murder, looting, and destruction ought to have us apoplectic with rage, not reaching for the popcorn.”

So will an argument about a television show change the course of history?

Probably not.

Since sanctity and ambiguity don’t seem to mix for many people, the vast majority of viewers may simply throw up their hands and declare a pox on both their houses and conclude that all religions wind up in fanaticism.

Yet this fourth episode (of six total) is in many ways the most powerful and affecting — and instructive — so far.

It features pointed debates about personal conscience, and while More’s character is deprived of his most famous final lines, and Cromwell’s image is further buffed, their final encounter in More’s prison cell reveals a deeper humanity — and spirituality — in each of them, and perhaps a better lesson than their dueling hagiographies.

“When we meet again in heaven, as I hope we will,” More says to Cromwell, “all our differences will be forgotten. But for now, we can’t wish them away.”

YS/MG END GIBSON

“More or less,” by Eamon Duffy in the Tablet of London. The eminent Cambridge University church historian provides a balanced take on the historical record and contrasts it with the account in “Wolf Hall.”

“How ‘Wolf Hall’ will entertain millions — and threaten to distort history in the process,” by Gregory Wolf in the Washington Post. Wolf details many of the arguments critical of Mantel’s version.

“Thomas More: Villain: What ‘Wolf Hall’ means for religious freedom,” by Mark Movsesian in First Things.

“‘Wolf Hall’ and upmarket anti-Catholicism,” by George Weigel. The Catholic apologist says the series and novel show an anti-Catholic bias that has shifted from the Protestant to the secular world.

“imagining Thomas More (or not),” is a blog post by the Baylor literary critic Alan Jacobs. Jacobs cites his own review of Mantel’s book five years ago and comments on the Weigel and Movsesian essays.

“Sir Thomas More: saint or sinner?” by Peter Stanford, a Catholic writer, in The Telegraph.

“Thomas Cromwell was the Islamic State of his day,” by Dominic Selwood in The Telegraph. Selwood argues that Cromwell was in fact a man “whose record for murder, looting, and destruction ought to have us apoplectic with rage, not reaching for the popcorn.”

“Like Isis, Thomas More believed passionately in burning people alive,” by Kate Maltby in The Spectator. Maltby criticizes Catholic bishops who have denounced the depiction of More in “Wolf Hall” and says More demonstrates where religious warfare of any kind leads.

“Thomas More is the villain of Wolf Hall. But is he getting a raw deal?” by Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian. Thorpe quotes the Catholic writer Peter Stanford as well as the Oxford church historian Diarmuid MacCulloch, a great fan of Cromwell over More.

“Invitation To a Beheading,” by the New Yorker book reviewer James Wood. This 2012 review makes some interesting observations about the goals of Mantel’s revisionism, and how it plays to a modern audience.

“Thomas More Was Not ‘Unnaturally Fond of Torturing Heretics’,” is a 2012 post on Mantel’s book at the Mirror of Justice blog. Written by Villanova law professor Michael Moreland, it details More’s record.

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Genocides and Holocausts: Never again (COMMENTARY)

An Armenian woman lights a candle during a Mass marking the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces, in Jerusalem’s Old City April 24, 2015. Photo courtesy REUTERS/Amir Cohen.
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(RNS) One hundred years ago, in April 1915 as World War I raged across Europe, the government of the Ottoman Empire attacked its Armenian citizens. Over the next several years, it is estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died. Able-bodied men were murdered or enslaved as forced labor in the army, and hundreds of thousands of women, children, the infirm and the elderly were marched into the Syrian desert to face death.

Supported by the Young Turks, an ultranationalist party that approved systematic deportation, abduction, torture, massacre and the expropriation of Armenian wealth, the German-allied Ottoman government used the excuse of war to initiate the forcible removal of Armenians from Armenia and Anatolia where they had lived for centuries.

The targeting and mass murder of Armenians has been termed a genocide.

Although racial, ethnic and religious wars have killed millions over the centuries, genocide is a unique byproduct of the 20th century. It requires both a rabid nationalism and the capacity of a central authority to organize and implement a sustained and systematic program of targeted mass destruction. Not until the 20th century had governments the necessary technologies, resources and means to ally their historical ethnic, religious or racist hatreds with radical nationalism to end the collective existence of a people.

The Armenian genocide was recognized and deplored around the world, even as modern Turkey resists the “genocide” label. American diplomats, Russians, Arabs and German officers stationed in Ottoman lands witnessed the slaughter and alerted the wider world. In May 1915, Great Britain, France and Russia vowed to hold the Turks personally responsible for their crimes. Relief efforts to save the “starving Armenians” were widespread.

Despite moral outrage, however, there were neither sanctions against the Ottoman Empire nor internationally orchestrated efforts to rescue hounded Armenians. Nor did the Armenians receive any reparations after the war, even though between 1920 and 1923, the Turks expelled or annihilated most of the remaining Armenian people.

It took another even more deadly genocide before the world’s moral outrage became international law. In 1948, after World War II, when the full horror of the Holocaust was laid bare and documented, the newly constituted United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It was part of a nascent body of international law resting on the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two covenants — on civil and political rights and on social, economic and cultural rights.

The 1948 Convention defined genocide as a crime against humanity and established international sanctions against any nation that in peacetime or war engaged in genocidal violence. It was a victory for all humanity and worthy of celebration.

However, the Convention was a victory that came too late for the millions who died terrible deaths in death camps and random murder via inconceivably brutal and inhumane methods. It came too late for the millions who were starved, beaten and murdered by the Nazis during Hitler’s bloody regime.

The refrain of “never again” arising after World War II has, regrettably, not been employed everywhere. Murderous organized groups such as the Islamic State and Boko Haram engage in brutal mass killings, torture, beheadings and often unspeakable atrocities. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, regularly calls for Israel’s annihilation, and Iran continues to arm terror groups committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

It strains the conscience of our modern societies to realize that on April 24 — 100 years after the Ottoman government murdered 250 leading Armenian intellectuals — the threat of further genocide hangs heavy over our so-called “civilized world.”

As a Polish Jew who escaped Europe on the eve of World War II, most of my family to perish at the hands of the Nazis, I bear personal witness to the horrors of religious and ethnic hatred. I vow that each and every victim of genocide and terrorism who died will never be forgotten.

(Tad Taube is chairman of Taube Philanthropies, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Honorary Consul General of Poland in San Francisco.)

KRE/AMB END TAUBE

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What the Polish president could have said about his country’s Holocaust complicity (COMMENTARY)

FBI Director James B. Comey speaks during a news conference on the release of the 9/11 Review Commission report in Washington on March 25, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
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(RNS) The director of the FBI stepped in it.

Or did he?

Last week, James B. Comey delivered a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in which he said the murderers and accomplices of Germany, Poland and Hungary “convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do. That’s what people do. And that should truly frighten us.”

The Polish government was not happy. President Bronislaw Komorowski castigated Comey for his “ignorance, lack of historical knowledge and possibly large personal aversion” toward Poles. And, as a gesture of goodwill, Comey has apologized.

Let’s be clear here. Comey was not accusing the nation of Poland of being complicit in the Holocaust. For all intents and purposes Poland as a nation temporarily ceased to exist during World War II.

But Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Croats, Estonians, Dutch, Latvians — who can deny that so many of them were willing conspirators with the Nazis in the roundup of Jews and the wholesale destruction of European Jewish life?

Here is how  Komorowski could have responded:

“Poland suffered terribly during World War II. We were invaded by both the Soviet Union and Germany. The Nazis intended to turn our people into a permanent underclass of slaves. If you have read William Styron’s book ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ or if you have seen the movie, then you know that the Nazis kidnapped Polish children and raised them as their own. Auschwitz was a killing field for the Poles, no less than for the Jews.

“By the end of the war, Poland lost 45 percent of her physicians and dentists, 57 percent of her lawyers, more than 16 percent of her teachers, 40 percent of her professors, 30 percent of her technicians, and more than 18 percent of her clergy.

“Let me go further. In the early Middle Ages, Polish kings welcomed Jews who were fleeing the Crusades. The Jews settled there and created a Polish middle class, as well as a powerful religious culture.

“And, let us not forget: During the war, many Polish citizens saved Jews. According to Yad VaShem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, 6,532 Poles were righteous gentiles. This is not only more than any other country; it accounts for no less than 26 percent of the total number of 24,811 people who Yad VaShem has recognized for their moral heroism.

A group of Jews is taken prisoner during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April 1943. Religion News Service File Photo. This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

“But, this moment also demands our honesty. Yes, in our best historical moments, we welcomed Jews, and we saved Jews. As Jews would say, that has been our ‘good inclination.’

“But, our ‘evil inclination’ has also been present. Anti-Semitism is deeply imbedded in our history. Some of that hatred was based in religion; some of it in Polish nationalism; often, a combination of the two.

“And, if we are to remember Polish righteous, then we must remember those of our people who were far from righteous. In August 1945, there were pogroms against Jewish survivors in Krakow. In July 1946, there was the infamous pogrom in Kielce. Within two years of the end of the war, our citizens murdered at least 1,500 Jews.

“The blood of the Jewish people stained the soil of Poland, and that blood continues to scream at us. In 2012, the Anti-Defamation League carried out a survey of Polish attitudes toward the Jews. I am ashamed to report, 54 percent of Poles believe ‘Jews have too much power in the business world.’ Many Poles believe that there is a Jewish conspiracy to control international banking and the media.

“And many Poles still harbor traditional, Christian anti-Semitic stereotypes about the Jews, including some of the vilest stereotypes imaginable.

“So, yes — I was personally troubled by what Comey said about how Poles collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust. I was troubled because he was neither entirely right, nor was he entirely wrong.

“But, in another sense, we Poles should welcome Comey’s remarks, because they offer us the opportunity for sober reflection, and even repentance.

“To repent of our dark history means we can write a new story. That is precisely what is happening now. Jewish life in Poland is growing again — much of it, under the auspices of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

“Consider the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. It is perhaps Poland’s greatest cultural achievement since the fall of communism.

“Not far from the smokestacks of Auschwitz, there is now a Jewish Community Center – a place of vibrant Jewish life, in the shadow of what had been Jewish death.

“Your words made us uncomfortable. May our discomfort be the gateway to repentance and renewal.”

(Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am of Bayonne, N.J., and the author of numerous books on Jewish spirituality and ethics, published by Jewish Lights Publishing and Jewish Publication Society.)

YS/MG END SALKIN

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Faith leaders call for religious protections ahead of gay marriage hearing

Citizens rallied on the steps of the Supreme Court on Monday (June 30), after it sided with the evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., ruling 5-4 that the arts-and-crafts chain does not have to offer insurance for types of birth control that conflict with company owners’ religious beliefs. RNS photo by Heather Adams This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

(RNS) As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on Tuesday (April 28) that could wind up legalizing gay marriage nationwide, dozens of Christian leaders have issued a call to civil authorities to preserve “the unique meaning of marriage in the law” — but also to “protect the rights of those with differing views of marriage.”

The open letter “to all in positions of public service,” released Thursday (April 23), seems to reflect a growing recognition by same-sex marriage foes that they may be on the losing side of the legal battle to bar gay marriage and need to broaden their focus to securing protections for believers.

Gay marriage opponents are also losing the battle for the hearts and minds of their own flocks: Polls show that American believers, like the rest of the public, are growing much more accepting of same-sex relationships, or at least much less inclined to invest time or resources into waging the fight against legalizing gay marriage.

This week’s statement, “The Defense of Marriage and the Right of Religious Freedom: Reaffirming a Shared Witness,” was signed by 35 religious leaders representing Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, Orthodox and Mormon churches. The only non-Christian signatory was Imam Faizul Khan of the Islamic Society of Washington Area.

The leaders forcefully reiterate their shared belief that marriage is “the union of one man and one woman” and argue that apart from religious doctrines, the state “has a compelling interest in maintaining marriage” for the good of society and the “well-being of children.”

But they add that “this commitment is inseparable from affirming the equal dignity of all people and the necessity of protecting their basic rights” if, for example, the high court rules that all states must recognize gay marriage.

“No person or community, including religious organizations and individuals of faith, should be forced to accept this redefinition,” they write. “Government should protect the rights of those with differing views of marriage to express their beliefs and convictions without fear of intimidation, marginalization or unwarranted charges that their values imply hostility, animosity, or hatred of others.”

Arguments over how or whether believers must accommodate gay people have become a flashpoint in the culture wars and a source of political and legislative debates.

That was vividly demonstrated earlier this month when owners of an Indiana pizzeria who announced they would not cater a gay wedding because of their Christian belief became the focus of threats, and a rallying point for opponents of gay rights.

The state legislature later amended the religious freedom law that the pizzeria cited to make it clear the law could not be used to discriminate. A religious freedom law in Arkansas went through a similar revision. Both steps were seen as defeats for religious freedom advocates, even though Republicans deemed friendly to the cause were in power in both states.

Increasingly, some have been pointing toward a new law in Utah as an example of where religious freedom champions should put their energies. That law, passed in March in a deeply conservative state with the support of Mormon leaders, grants statewide protections against housing and employment discrimination for gay and lesbians as long as those measures safeguard religious freedom.

Among the statement signers are: Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America; the Rev. Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod; the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers, III, president of the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies; George O. Wood, general superintendent of the Assemblies of God; and Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

YS/AMB END GIBSON

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What’s your ‘cosmic identity’? Philosopher says you have one

WASHINGTON (RNS) When she was a teen, Nancy Ellen Abrams told her rabbi that humanity created God.

She’s still at it.

And according to her new book — “A God that Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science and the Future of Our Planet” —  this God emerges from us, not the other way around.

Abrams grew up to become a philosopher of science, an attorney specializing in international science law, and co-author of books on dark energy and dark matter — the unseeable forces that comprise 95 percent of the universe — with her astrophysicist husband, Joel Primack.

Abrams’ God book is rooted in scientists’ discoveries in cosmology, the study of the origins of the universe. She expands her theory to the spiritual heavens by detailing a God that she could believe in after leaving Judaism and embracing atheism.

This God is definitely no relation to the loving, comforting, guiding God of the Abrahamic religions. Rather, Abrams says, the real God worthy of our attention is an “emergent force” generated by the collective consciousness of human beings. As she sees it, God is the “collective of our (best) aspirations.”

Nancy Ellen Abrams, author of “A God That Could Be Real.” Photo courtesy of Beacon Press This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Abrams writes:

“Collectively we are influencing God. The worse we behave, measured against our deepest aspirations, the weaker God becomes, not only for us but also for future generations. The better we act, the richer God becomes and the more useful to future generations. We have the power to strengthen the very God we turn to. …”

“The spiritual challenge for us is to accept the scientific picture of the universe and with the real help of a real God figure out how to act accordingly — in every way, not just technologically but sociologically, psychologically, spiritually, educationally, politically and every other way.”

Then, Abrams writes, we can use our “god-capacity” to save the “still-evolving cosmic clan in which each of us is a living organism.”

“We have an urgent need to identify as the cosmic beings we actually are with a huge role in the cosmos. We all have an identity and what happens when people don’t use it is a terrible waste and we endanger ourselves,” said Abrams, whose book is full of warnings about the need to care for creation, however you think it got here.

In some ways, she’s circled back to the core Jewish teaching of “tikkun olam,” the belief that humans are obligated to join God in healing and repairing the world. She is out to “reclaim the old spiritual vocabulary to interpret it in ways that make sense in our time and take back the truth.”

While Abrams finds immense comfort and joy in this God, she sees no need to outsource another major role assigned to the Abrahamic visions of the Almighty — moral guidance. Hers is no tsk, tsk, tsk God who judges, punishes and forgives. Personal salvation is irrelevant, as is the concept of grace.

“A God That Could Be Real,” by Nancy Ellen Abrams. Photo courtesy of Beacon Press This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

“God does not discriminate against or judge or reward individuals,” she said in an interview. “We have a God emerging from all our good aspirations — the urge to love more, do more, be more. The best part of us is God.”

Still, there are religionlike behaviors in her own life — prayer, for one. She defines prayer not as petitions for miracles, or requests for the intervention of an omnipotent force in one’s personal drama or trauma. Prayer, she said is “putting myself imaginatively into the reality I know to exist, feeling what it is really like to be part of the earth, part of the astonishing universe.”

She writes: “The emerging God, after all, is the source of all meaning, old and new, and can be understood this way in any religion that doesn’t require taking its teachings literally.”

She said: “It really would be a challenge for a cosmologist to be an evangelical in academia. No one would respect them at all. I can’t imagine how someone could be comfortable with disassociating the science they are doing from the meaning of the science.”

When told of Abrams’ assertion, evangelical Christian astrophysicist Deborah Haarsma broke out laughing.

Haarsma, former professor of astronomy and physics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., is president of BioLogos, a public advocacy group founded by geneticist Francis Collins (now head of the National Institutes of Health) to promote the idea that there’s no conflict between science and a Christian belief in a creator God.

Haarsma quickly named a slew of world-class scientists — and Christians — who know their cosmos:  Jennifer Wiseman, NASA’s senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope; Anglican theologian, priest and acclaimed physicist Sir John Polkinghorne; and Owen Gingerich, a Harvard professor emeritus of astronomy and the history of science and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Haarsma said scientists, like religious believers, want to find “ultimate truth.”

But personally, Haarsma said, “I do not find Abrams’ picture of God very satisfying. But I don’t think science is equipped to prove or disprove God. The Christian picture of God leads us to expect a universe with a beginning, filled with order and beauty. What I find in science is in harmony with my religious experience.”

Abrams is not alone in giving selective credibility to Scripture and science, according to a study released in January in the American Sociological Review. It found that for about one in five Americans, science wins the coin toss on some issues, but religion wins on key issues such as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Timothy O’Brien, assistant professor at the University of Evansville in Indiana, and co-author of the research study, said: “We were surprised to find this pretty big group who are pretty knowledgeable and appreciative about science and technology but who are also very religious and who reject certain scientific theories.”

KRE/AMB END GROSSMAN

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Vatican standoff with France tests pope’s ‘Who am I to judge?’ stance

Laurent Stefanini is seen at the Elysee Palace in Paris April 22, 2015. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer. *Editors: This photo can only be used with RNS-STEFANINI-VATICAN and RNS-FRANCE-VATICAN, transmitted April 24, 2015.

PARIS (RNS) Pope Francis has been hailed for his forward thinking, but — at least according to French news reports — the pontiff has put on the brakes when it comes to a gay French ambassador at the Vatican.

In January, French President Francois Hollande nominated his protocol chief Laurent Stefanini as Vatican envoy to replace outgoing ambassador Bruno Joubert. The pick seemed ideal: 55-year-old Stefanini is described as brilliant and a devout Roman Catholic, who secured support for his candidacy from Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris. He is also a known quantity at the Vatican, having served as a top official at the French embassy to the Holy See a decade ago.

But so far, his nomination has gone nowhere. On Wednesday (April 22), France’s investigative weekly “Le Canard Enchaine” reported Pope Francis met with Stefanini last weekend. The message: The pontiff did not appreciate France’s 2013 same-sex marriage law, nor being pressured into accepting Stefanini’s candidacy.

French media report the standoff is due to Stefanini’s sexual orientation; France’s foreign ministry has only said his private life should be respected.

The pope’s reaction, as reported in the media, appears to contrast starkly with his remarks two years ago in which he said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Another French media report said that the unusual meeting between Stefanini and Francis — a pope rarely gets directly involved in the appointment of an ambassador — was friendly and lasted 40 minutes, and ended with the two men praying together.

The French government has said little about the matter, except to confirm the meeting between the pope and the Vatican nominee took place.

“Nothing has changed,” government spokesman Stephane Le Foll told reporters. “France has proposed a candidate and for the time being we are waiting for the Vatican’s reply, after the usual discussions and review of his candidacy.”

Bernard Kouchner, France’s former foreign minister, has been more outspoken.

“The Vatican seems badly placed to refuse homosexuals,” Kouchner told RTL Radio this week, adding, “but apart from that, I adore Pope Francis.”

YS/AMB END BRYANT

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Activists demand Obama appoint envoy for persecuted Middle Eastern Christians

Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State kneel in front of armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, Libya, in this still image from an undated video made available on social media on Feb. 15, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Social media via Reuters TV
*Editors: This photo is not available for republication.

WASHINGTON (RNS) Beheadings, enslavement, kidnappings and rape plague minority religious communities across the Middle East, and it’s time for President Obama to fill a job created to address their plight, a group of prominent evangelicals, scholars and other religious leaders told the White House.

In the seven months since Congress created a “special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia,” the extreme violence against these groups has only escalated, the religious leaders wrote to Obama on Monday (April 20). Nominate someone, they implored.

“The persecution and even eradication of religious minorities in the Middle East right now is the biggest humanitarian and national security crisis that we face,” said Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore, who serves as president of the denomination’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “There is a moral imperative to do everything we can to advocate for imperiled religious minorities.”

Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore, right, leads a June 9, 2014, panel discussion as David Platt, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, listens. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

The letter, sent under the auspices of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Roundtable, was signed by Moore and 22 other religious freedom activists, including National Association of Evangelicals President Leith Anderson and the Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church in Central Florida. More than 30 groups also signed, including Coptic Solidarity, the Chaldean Community Foundation, International Christian Concern and the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society.

“The Islamic State’s murderous reach has extended beyond Iraq and Syria,” the letter reads, asking Obama to “swiftly” find a candidate for the envoy job. “Doing so would signal to beleaguered communities in the Middle East, and beyond, that America stands with them.”

Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, said violent rampages by the Islamic State, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, al-Shabab and other Muslim extremist groups amount to the ethnic cleansing of Christians. Other religious minorities in the Middle East and elsewhere, including the Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan, Baha’is in Iran and Yazidis in Iraq, are also suffering grievously.

The new push echoes earlier calls for Obama to fill the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom position, which had sat vacant for months. Rabbi David Saperstein was confirmed for that post in December.

Even with Saperstein in place, the U.S. also needs a special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia, Shea said, noting the extreme and widespread violence these groups face.

Shea blamed U.S. political and religious leaders for failing to publicly recognize that victims of this violence are targeted because of their religion. Gunmen from al-Shabab hunted down Christian students when they killed 148 people at a Kenyan university on April 2, for example.

A Red Cross worker comforts a mourner as bodies of the students killed in an April 2, 2015, attack on a Kenyan university arrive at the Chiromo Mortuary in Nairobi. The assault by Somali militants killed 148 people.
REUTERS/Herman Kariuki
*Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-PERSECUTION-ENVOY, originally transmitted on April 23, 2015. courtesy Reuters This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Obama and other leaders shy away from relevant religious labels, Shea continued, as if “Christians are the oppressors and they can’t be victims.”

Moore said American Christians are trying to do something about violence against Christians and other minorities in the Mideast. “I see Christians praying for the persecuted church more than they ever have. I see Christians contacting their members of Congress and asking for actions on these issues more than I ever have before.”

But “Americans across the board aren’t as alarmed as they should be because I think they’ve grown callous to violence in the Middle East, and some Americans wrongly assume that violence in the Middle East is something we should just expect,” Moore added.

The White House did not have an immediate response to the letter.

KRE/MG END MARKOE

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On eve of anniversary, Turkey’s ‘cultural genocide’ of Armenian history is ongoing

The Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island, Lake Van in Turkey. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

YUKARI BAKRACLI, Turkey (RNS) This tiny Kurdish village outside the city of Van in Turkey’s southeast is home to the ruins of a once-famous 11th-century Armenian Christian monastery.

Known to Armenians as Varagavank, it thrived as a place of worship until Turkish forces looted it and murdered parishioners in the mass killing sprees of 1915.

Today, the roof is collapsing. Toppled stone columns lie nearby. And with no signage, there is no acknowledgment it was once a celebrated church for Armenians.

Varagavank is one of hundreds of disappearing physical reminders of a community whose history in present-day Turkey goes back more than 2,000 years. Over the past century, the Turkish government, in writing its own narrative of what Armenians call genocide, has destroyed many Armenian churches, homes, schools and cemeteries or allowed them to fall into ruins. They are sites other countries might consider valuable antiquities.

“The term we use for this is ‘cultural genocide,’” said Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, a historian at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. “We consider what is happening to many churches a continuation of the genocide which started at the beginning of the 20th century. It is painful, utterly painful.”

Historians and visitors have noted holes in the ground of Armenian historical sites throughout Turkey, evidence of widespread rumors that Armenians buried their riches before fleeing.

A closer view of the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island, Lake Van. It is one of the only Armenian sites the Turkish government has restored and a major attraction for diaspora Armenians who visit Turkey searching for signs of their heritage. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Hermine Sayan, an Armenian who lives in Istanbul, said her heart was broken when she visited what remained of a destroyed church in Malatya, a city in eastern Turkey, a few years ago.

“We stood together saying our prayers, and we were crying,” said Sayan, whose grandparents survived the genocide.

On Friday (April 24), Armenians worldwide will commemorate 100 years since almost 1.5 million of their ancestors died in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, in massacres, by starvation or during forced death marches into the Syrian desert.

The date marks a century of fierce disagreement between Armenia and Turkey over what happened that spring. Armenians and their supporters — including many historians, Pope Francis and the European Parliament — say the murders constitute a systemic elimination of their population from eastern Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

But Turkey rejects the genocide label, saying hundreds of thousands of both Turks and Armenians died in battles between Ottoman and Russian forces in World War I. In a move that disappointed Armenians, the White House on Tuesday (April 21) announced that President Barack Obama would not use the word “genocide” to describe the deaths despite his 2008 presidential campaign promise to do so.

Preservation and respect of Armenian history, culture and monuments in Turkey is a critical step toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, said George Aghjayan, an Armenian-American from Westminster, Mass., who studies Armenian demographics in Turkey and its environs.

“We have a right to our presence on this land,” said Aghjayan, who plans to visit former Armenian villages and ruined sites in Van this weekend. “It’s where our people were born, and it shouldn’t be devoid of any evidence of their presence.”

Van, located on Lake Van’s picturesque shores, was once the capital of Vaspurakan, the first and biggest kingdom of greater Armenia. Van was also  where, in 1915, Armenians saved thousands of their own when they held back the Ottoman army from city walls for a month. Resistance leaders who survived the siege founded the Armenian republic.

The Van Museum, however, offers a different take on regional history. One exhibit shows the “massacre (of Turks) undertaken by the Armenians during the occupation of Van in 1915 by the Russian troops,” according to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s website. (The museum was damaged in a 2011 earthquake and is being rebuilt.)

Faded frescoes inside the once-famous Armenian Christian Varagavank monastery, built in the 11th century. It is in a Kurdish village and now known as Yedi Kilise, Turkish for “seven churches,” because it used to be an enormous monastery complex. Religion News Service photo by Tania Karas This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Present-day Van is part of unofficial Turkish Kurdistan. No Armenians are left; Turkey’s 60,000 remaining Armenians mainly live in Istanbul. But Van and nearby villages contain what are known as Turkey’s “hidden Armenians,” descendants of women and children who converted to Islam after they were adopted by sympathetic neighbors or forced into marriage. Some are upfront about their origins, said Ferzan Demirtas, a tour guide in Van. But others stay silent, still fearful after a century of living as Kurds or Turks.

Cengiz Aktar, a scholar of Armenian-Turkish relations with the Istanbul Policy Center, argues that the Turkish attitude toward its Armenian minority is shifting. Aktar studies the politics of memory, or the influence of politics in how collective remembrances take shape.

“The real memories are undertaken by Turkish society,” Aktar said, adding that Turkish citizens are increasingly exploring the truth behind what they learned in school.

Turkey’s attempt to rewrite history is evident in Yemislik, another village outside Van, where Turkish officials replaced a former Armenian monastery with a mosque. But Van is perhaps best known for the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar Island in Lake Van. It is one of the only Armenian churches restored by the Turkish government, though it operates as a state museum.

On the eve of its reopening in 2007 after nearly a century of disuse, Turkish officials balked at placing a cross on the church’s dome. They relented after a few years.

So far, Turkish promises to restore other sites have gone unfulfilled, leaving some to ponder whether Armenians of the diaspora should pitch in. Aghjayan, however, questions the logic of asking Armenians to pay for restoration of churches and villages from which their ancestors were displaced.

“What kind of justice is that?” he asked.

YS/MG END KARAS

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Sifting through religious debris in ‘Dig,’ what’s fact and what’s fiction?

(RNS) Trapdoors, secret chambers and mysterious torch-lit beach rituals. The eighth episode of “Dig,” the Holy Land conspiracy thriller that aired Thursday (April 23) on the USA Network, serves up all these classic elements of suspense.

But that heady cocktail comes with a shot of religious history and biblical references that add context to what is already a complex plot involving cloned high priests, murderous rabbis and the cutest little red heifer ever genetically engineered on a Danish farm. Can you hear religion and popular culture go CRASH?

“It can’t all be crazy, though, can it?” Emma Wilson (Alison Sudol) asks the hot FBI agent on “Dig,” Peter Connelly (Jason Isaacs), as they look at end-of-the-world messages left behind by a crazed — and dead — archaeologist.

“The messenger, maybe,” Peter replies. “But not the message.”

Both the bad guys and the good guys descend on a nunnery belonging to a group called the Sisters of Dinah, in search of an antique plaque depicting “the revenge of Dinah.”

The fictional religious order and its equally fictional plaque are derived from the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah. The Book of Genesis tells how Dinah is kidnapped and raped by Shechem, a rival tribesman. Shechem then asks for Dinah’s hand and says her family can ask any “bride-price” they like from his family.

Jacob’s sons ask for their foreskins.

Shechem and his tribe are circumcised, Dinah is handed over — and three days later, while Shechem and his men are recuperating from the “surgery,” Dinah’s brothers kill them, plunder their loot and steal their sister away. The brothers tell their angry father, “Should he treat our sister as a harlot?”

There is no Catholic order of nuns called the Sisters of Dinah, but there are — as described by evil “Dig” archaeologist Ian Margrove (Richard E. Grant) — religious orders in Jerusalem that date back to the Crusades.

Peter and Golan (Ori Pfeffer), the two supersleuths on “Dig,” visit a university professor who tells them of his delusional colleague who wrote about a treasure hidden under the Temple Mount.

“This was 1988,” the professor says. “His paper fed into the Intifada.”

The professor is referring to the first Palestinian uprising against Israel, which started in 1987 and lasted until the early 1990s. “Intifada” is Arabic for “shaking off” and describes armed resistance by Palestinians who believe Israel wrongfully occupies their land.

During the first Intifada, a group called the Temple Mount Faithful tried to lay a cornerstone atop the Temple Mount, the home of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s most sacred sites. Jews believe that the Temple Mount was where their temple once stood. Muslims believe it is the site where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Temple Mount Faithful resembles the fictional Jerusalem Heritage Center in “Dig” in that both groups want to see the Temple Mount under Jewish control so they can rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Golan goes into the desert to a site called Qumran. What, he wonders, are Rabbi Lev and his accomplices doing there?

Qumran is a real place, a series of caves on the shore of the Dead Sea. It is famously the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a jar by a couple of Bedouin shepherds in 1947.

As Emma Wilson says on “Dig,” Qumran has been inhabited several times. The oldest things found at the site date from the Iron Age — about the eighth century B.C. The Romans are believed to have destroyed the settlement there during the Jewish War of 70 A.D. — the same war chronicled by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish-Roman historian referenced in an earlier episode of “Dig.”

And who lived at Qumran? The Essenes — just as they apparently do in “Dig.” Described in the show as protectors — they are awfully handy with an automatic weapon —  the real Essenes were a monastic sect. Real archaeological digs at Qumran suggest they probably numbered about 200, built a fortress-style tower and likely slept in a ring of caves around it — the same caves where the climax of this episode occurs.

But more relevant to “Dig,” Essene theology divided the world into two camps — the “sons of darkness” and the “sons of light.” Guess which one they were! And the leaders of these two camps were the “angel of darkness” and the “prince of light.” Could the “Dig” character known only as “The Essene” be this prince?

Alert the Essenes — there are only two hours of “Dig” left to find out.

YS/MG END WINSTON

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In Boston, engaging both sides of the church’s debate on gays (ANALYSIS)

At Q conference in Boston, a panel discusses same-sex issues (from he left: Gabe Lyons, Debra Hirsch, Matthew vines, Julie Rodgers, David Gushee, Dan Kimball). – Image credit: Parker Young Photography This image is available for Web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

BOSTON (RNS) Only a few dozen worshippers attend Boston’s Tremont Temple Baptist Church on a typical Sunday, but the historic church was once so prominent that legendary preacher Dwight L. Moody called it “America’s pulpit.”

This week, Tremont’s massive auditorium played host to influence once again when 1,300 Christian leaders gathered for the Q conference to discuss the most pressing issues facing their faith. There was no official theme, but one strand wove its way through multiple presentations and conversations: America’s — and many Christians’ — debate over sexuality.

While at least three other Christian conferences during the past year focused on same-sex debates, this is the only one to bring together both pro-gay speakers and those who oppose gay marriage and same-sex relationships.

“The aim of Q is to create space for learning and conversation, and we think the best way to do that is exposure,” said Q founder Gabe Lyons. “These are conversations that most of America is having, and they are not going away.”

Which is not to say Lyons’ decision was without controversy.

Eric Teetsel, executive director of the Manhattan Declaration project that aims to rally resistance to same-sex marriage, urged Lyons to rescind his invitations to pro-gay panelists, whom he called false prophets professing to be Christians. Owen Strachan, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, echoed the sentiment and tweeted that he was “shocked that @QIdeas features pro-‘gay-Christianity’ speakers.”

Lyons did not respond publicly to the criticism, but said such positions were rooted in fear.

“Some people are afraid that if those who are theologically progressive are invited, it suggests they hold an equally valid idea,” Lyons said. “We still believe the historic view of sexuality is true, but we are also confident that the trueness of that view can carry its own weight.”

By committing to this sort of dialogue, the Q conference is a microcosm of the larger debate on same-sex issues happening around many kitchen tables in Christian America. These conversations have moved beyond outmoded questions such as “Is homosexuality a choice?” and “Can gay people be made straight through prayer and counseling?” and instead wrestle with biblical interpretation and questions of how LGBT people of faith should live.

But more importantly, the shift in this year’s Q conference reflects the reality that those conversations do not occur in echo chambers of monologue, isolated from those who disagree. They happen between gay and straight people, between traditionalists and progressives, between young and old. Some are maintaining their long-held views, others have changed their minds, and still others aren’t really sure what they believe.

Richard Stearns, president of the humanitarian group World Vision U.S., discussed his organization’s controversial decision to hire people in same-sex relationships and the agency’s abrupt reversal. “World Vision never changed our view of biblical marriages,” he said, but was merely trying to find common ground on a divisive issue.

Even when the speakers weren’t discussing sexuality, they seemed to be discussing sexuality. Andrew Sullivan, a gay writer who formerly blogged at “The Dish,” spoke on how intellectual diversity makes us better people. Gordon College President Michael Lindsay, who sparked controversy when he reaffirmed his school’s conservative stance on homosexuality, delivered a talk titled, “Do We Have to Agree?”

A pre-conference survey found that almost half of those in attendance were church leaders, and 53 percent held graduate degrees. Thirty-one percent self-identified as “conservative,” 8 percent as “liberal,” and 59 percent as either “independent” or “moderate.”

Tension rose during two discussions moderated by Lyons that pitted one side against the other. One explored whether the church’s historical teaching on sexuality was reliable. For this, California pastor Dan Kimball argued that pro-gay Christians were elevating their personal experiences with LGBT friends and family over the clear teaching of Scripture.

On the other side, David Gushee, a prominent evangelical ethicist who recently announced he had changed his mind to become LGBT-affirming, countered that traditional interpretations of relevant passages of Scripture were flawed and amounted to a “toxic body of tradition that bears bad fruit.”

Another panel on “The Church’s Gay Dilemma” featured two Christians who identify as LGBT. Julie Rodgers, a leader among the increasingly visible movement of celibate gay Christians, argued from the right, and Matthew Vines, author of “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships,” took the opposing side.

While they differed on whether the Bible allows for committed same-sex relationships, they both emphasized the need for Christians to make amends for their historically poor treatment of LGBT persons. Vines said straight people should acknowledge their “history of oppression,” and Rodgers said Christians should “repent of our treatment of gay and lesbian people.”

And on that point, the divided crowd was united, erupting in multiple rounds of applause.

Lyons, whose 2007 best-selling book “unChristian” included research indicating that Christians were perceived as “too political” and “anti-gay,” said he personally believes the Bible prohibits homosexual activity. At Stanford University in 2013, he debated the matter with openly gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson.

Lyons said his debate with Robinson taught him about the importance of listening to those on the other side, and inspired his decision to include a range of voices at the Boston conference.

The conversations at Q — both onstage and off — do not mirror the raging debates common on cable news networks, but they more closely resemble the national conversation as it occurs in many homes, workplaces, and churches. And in this way, it may be a model for other Christian organizations who are seeking to engage the same-sex debate.

As Lyons said from the same stage where Frederick Douglass first read the Emancipation Proclamation, “What starts in Boston tends to work its way around the country.”

KRE/AMB END MERRITT

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