Covering religion is unlike other assignments in journalism, as any reporter on the “Godbeat” can tell you. Ruth Gledhill (photo at right), veteran religion correspondent of The Times in London and fellow blogger (hers is called Articles of Faith), recently gave a short, witty and insightful talk on reporting about faith.

There’s a lot there in only 11minutes and 27 seconds. How about this for an opener: “The only place the press is mentioned in the Bible is in Luke 19 when Zacchaeus the tax collector has to climb a tree to see Jesus because of the crowds. The King James Version renders this: ‘he couldn’t see because of the press’.”

Click here for the audio tape of the talk. And let us know if you sometimes feel like Zacchaeus.

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The Church of England could restrict the powers of some women bishops under a plan designed to end a rift between traditionalists who want to keep the all-male senior clergy and liberals demanding equality.  The proposal has reignited the long-running debate over a supposed ecclesiastical “stained-glass ceiling” that stops women from attaining the most senior roles in the church.

The Church of England body reviewing the law on women bishops, the Revision Committee, has voted to change the rules to remove certain powers from female bishops in dioceses where they face opposition from traditionalists. Specially-appointed male bishops would assume those powers and the new system would be written into British law, the committee said in a statement.

(Photo: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the U.S. Episcopal Church, 4 Nov 2006/Jonathan Ernst)

While Anglicans in the United States, Canada and Australia already have women bishops, conservatives in many other parts of the Communion strongly oppose them. They say there is nothing in the Bible or church history to support women bishops. Liberals, who argue that women should be treated equally, said the latest proposals to allow women bishops, albeit with reduced powers in some areas, risked creating a two-tier church.

“Where there are parishes who don’t recognize women bishops and want to look to another bishop, that diocesan bishop’s duties and responsibilities to those parishes would be reduced automatically,” a Church of England spokesman said. “Those duties would pass to this other bishop.”

Read the whole story here.

Church of England statement “Revision Committee on Women in the Episcopate”

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The academic study of religion has come a long way from the days when knowledge of scripture, history and a few ancient languages were the main qualifications a scholar needed. Psychology, sociology and other social sciences have been applied to the field for over a century. Over the past 20 years, cognitive science has been edging into the field, especially with the explosion of neuroscience research. Some of the hottest research into religion is now being done with brain scanners searching for data on what happens inside believers’ heads when they pray or feel a special connection to God.

(Photo: John Teehan at the Neuroscience Boot Camp, 6 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Among the participants at the University of Pennsylvania’s Neuroscience Boot Camp I’m attending this week and next is John Teehan, an associate professor in the religion department at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. He’s seen how cognitive science has brought new tools and insights to the study of religion and may eventually challenge the ways religions justify their beliefs. He is writing a book about how many moral teachings in the Bible fit with the moral psychology that cognitive science says evolved naturally. I asked Teehan for an overview of what’s happening in the religion studies field in the United States.

“At the end of the 19^th century, there was a real interest in looking at religion from a psychological perspective,” he said. “Sigmund Freud and William James were the major figures. The Freudian paradigm was not a scientific one, even though Freud thought it was, and our understanding of the mind and the brain was primitive then compared to what we have now. What’s happening now is that the science of the mind has advanced to the point that we’re actually developing a scientific understanding of the mind. With the cognitive revolution involving cognitive science, neurological science and evolution studies, a more empirical approach to understanding the mind and morality is developing. Over the last 20 years, some of these scholars have started to look more particularly at religion. This field of the cognitive science of religion started in the early ’90s looking at religious behavior and rituals and how emotions mediate or reinforce religious experience.”

Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie’s book Faces in the Clouds (1993) played an important part in turning religious studies towards cognitive science, Teehan said. Guthrie’s thesis was that people naturally tend to believe events are caused by a conscious agent and this belief was an important evolutionary tool. “If you live in a very uncertain and dangerous environment, as humans did for most of their history, it’s very important to be able to make sense of what you’re hearing and seeing. Guthrie points out the best rule of thumb is, when in doubt, overinterpret. If you hear a rustling in the bush, it could be the wind but it’s much more useful to interpret that as a snake or a possible predator. If you’re wrong and it’s just the wind, you’ve lost nothing. But if you think it’s the wind and it turns out to be a snake, you’re in danger. Guthrie argues this is an ingrained mental predisposition. There has since been lots of empirical work to show how easy it is to get people to think in terms of agents… Religions are built out of that and those we have today continue to tap into that.”

Teehan stressed the empirical work being done to test this thesis is not restricted to testing religious people. Researchers have found people in various situations respond the same way. Other new research into religion involves studying how people process information, how they make moral decisions and why they punish people who act against the community’s generally accepted morality.

“A lot of work in morality shows cooperation can develop among groups of strangers, but all the studies seem to show those effects only in very small communities. But humans have incredibly complex and large systems of cooperation. How do we get from one to the other? It seems that religion plays a complicated role here. A major role is the belief in a moral God who serves as the overseer of the community. One of the problems with complex societies is that it’s easy to benefit from society without contributing, the “free rider” problem. That problem is solved or improved if there is a common belief that all cheating is being observed. Behavioral economics has developed various games to test peoples’ willingness to cooperate and be generous in anonymous situations. When those situation are observed by somebody, people tend to be more generous… So part of the proposition is that part of the development of religion was an adaptation to help community cohesion and help communities develop into larger units.”

Religion also seems to play a role in drawing lines between an in-group and an out-group. “There is evidence that we are much more morally sensitive to people we identify with in our in-group than in an out-group,” Teehan said. “One study shows neurological evidence of how people respond to faces of in-group versus out-group members. One thing to be done is to see how religious identification or symbols or rhetoric may impact on those studies.”

Looking to the future, Teehan said cognitive science could provide guidelines or constraints for testing some of the more speculative propositions that scholars of religion put forward. “We have the theories, but can we see see what’s going on in the brain and does that seem to support what the theories predict? That would be significant if we have the cognitive psychology, evolutionary theory and neuroscience saying that the theories are coherent. With the explosive development in this field, we’re on the cusp of lots of new information. That’s very exciting.”

(Photo: Student volunteer wearing cap recording electroencephalograpic data, 5 Aug 2009/Tom Heneghan)

This scientific approach has established itself sufficiently in the religious studies field for the American Academy of Religion, the main scholarly association in the discipline, to add panels on cognitive science and religion at its annual meetings in the past two or three years, Teehan said. At some conferences, religious people present say the new approach gives another insight into God’s creation while the atheists in attendance see it as one last nail in the coffin of faith.

“My sense is that both of those are extreme and unjustified positions,” Teehan said. “This work does not entail atheism but I believe it does have implications for the justification of religious beliefs and claims. If we want to look at religion academically, scientifically, rationally, this is going to change some of the claims that can be made. We’re starting to generate good empirical evidence on how it is people come to have religious belief, the kind of belief they have and how those beliefs function in their moral lives and their decision making.”

Here’s a short video where Teehan talks about his upcoming book drawing links between Biblical teachings and moral psychology:

What do you think? Does a scientific study of religion like this undermine faith by showing “it’s all in the brain”? Or could it bring more insight into God’s creation? Or neither?

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The surviving parts of the world’s oldest Christian Bible were reunited online on Monday, generating excitement among biblical scholars still striving to unlock its mysteries. The Codex Sinaiticus was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.

Not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, but the pages that have include the whole of the New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ’s death by the Four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Bible’s remaining 800 pages and fragments — it was originally some 1400 pages long — also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost.

Read our full story here. And consult the Codex here.

(Photo: Part of the Codex Sinaiticus at the British Library in London 3 July 2009/Kieran Doherty)

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It started with “assalaamu alaykum” and ended with “may God’s peace be upon you.” Inbetween, President Barack Obama dotted his speech to the Muslim world with Islamic terms and references meant to resonate with his audience. The real substance in the speech were his policy statements and his call for a “new beginning” in U.S. relations with Muslims, as outlined in our trunk news story. But the new tone was also important and it struck a chord with many Muslims who heard the speech, as our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon found. Not all, of course — you can find positive and negative reactions here.

(Photo: Iraqi in Baghdad watches Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Mohammed Ameen)

Among Obama’s Islamic touches were four references to the Koran (which he always called the Holy Koran), his approving mention of the scientific, mathematical and philosophical achievements of the medieval Islamic world and his citing of multi-faith life in Andalusia. These are standard elements that many Islam experts — Muslims and non-Muslims — mention in speeches at learned conferences, but it’s not often that you hear an American president talking about them.

Two religious references particularly caught my attention because they weren’t the usual conference circuit clichés. One was his comment about being in “the region where (Islam) was first revealed” – a choice of past participle showing respect for the religion.

The other came when he said Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.” The Sura al-Isra is the Koran chapter about Mohammad’s Night Journey to heaven, which tradition says started in Jerusalem on what Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and Jews the Temple Mount. It was an interesting way to cite Islamic tradition to say Jerusalem should be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together.” The interjection “peace be upon them” had both an Islamic tone and an interfaith touch.

(Photo: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip watch Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

Obama also gave the American Muslim population estimate — 7 million — that prompted him to tell a French interviewer earlier this week that the U.S. could be considered “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He didn’t repeat that phrase in his speech, however, possibly because the figures don’t back it up. Figures for Muslim populations are dodgy because many countries don’t keep such data. Recent estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million, so he’s taken about the highest figures around. If those figures are correct, the U.S. would still only rank only about 30th on the list of countries with the largest Muslim populations. That’s way down on this Wikipedia list, with Azerbaijan and Burkina Faso. That’s nowhere near the really big Muslim populations like the top three Indonesia (195 million), Pakistan (160 million) and India (140 million). Maybe that’s why his speechwriters backed off the “one of the largest” claim.

The end of the speech also had an interesting twist. Obama reached for one of the quotes from the Koran that Muslims cite most frequently when they call for tolerance among peoples: “The Holy Koran tells us, “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

(Photo: Egyptians in cafe watch Obama’s speech, 4 June 2009/Asmaa Waguih)

But he followed it up with quotes from the other two Abrahamic religions: “The Talmud tells us: ‘The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.’ The Holy Bible tells us, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’.”

What did you think of Obama’s speech?

Here’s a short video about the speech:

Pope Benedict’s long-awaited address to Muslims at the King Hussein bin Talal Mosque topped the day’s list of speeches. It dominated our news coverage today. He also spoke at Mount Nebo, where the Bible says Moses glimpsed the Promised Land before dying, and at a ceremony to bless the cornerstone of a Catholic university being built in Madaba. The mosque and Madaba speeches were classic Ratzinger, with some of his trademark theological and philosophical arguments. If he had delivered the mosque speech at Regensburg, there might never have been a “Regensburg.” Benedict ended the day with a short sermon at vespers in the Greek-Melkite Cathedral of Saint George.

(Photo: Pope Benedict and Prince Ghazi tour the mosque, 9 May 2009/Tony Gentile)

Here are excerpts from today’s speeches.

THE MOSQUE SPEECH

UNITE TO DEFEND RELIGION: “We cannot fail to be concerned that today, with increasing insistency, some maintain that religion fails in its claim to be, by nature, a builder of unity and harmony, an expression of communion between persons and with God. Indeed some assert that religion is necessarily a cause of division in our world; and so they argue that the less attention given to religion in the public sphere the better. Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society? In the face of this situation, where the opponents of religion seek not simply to silence its voice but to replace it with their own, the need for believers to be true to their principles and beliefs is felt all the more keenly. Muslims and Christians, precisely because of the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding, must today strive to be known and recognized as worshippers of God faithful to prayer, eager to uphold and live by the Almighty’s decrees, merciful and compassionate, consistent in bearing witness to all that is true and good, and ever mindful of the common origin and dignity of all human persons, who remain at the apex of God’s creative design for the world and for history.”

INTERFAITH DIALOGUE: “The resolve of Jordanian educators and religious and civic leaders to ensure that the public face of religion reflects its true nature is praiseworthy… Of great merit too are the numerous initiatives of inter-religious dialogue supported by the Royal Family and the diplomatic community and sometimes undertaken in conjunction with the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. These include the ongoing work of the Royal Institutes for Inter-faith studies and for Islamic Thought, the Amman Message of 2004, the Amman Interfaith Message of 2005, and the more recent Common Word letter which echoed a theme consonant with my first encyclical: the unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbour, and the fundamental contradiction of resorting to violence or exclusion in the name of God.

(Photo: Benedict delivers his speech, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

“Such initiatives clearly lead to greater reciprocal knowledge, and they foster a growing respect both for what we hold in common and for what we understand differently. Thus, they should prompt Christians and Muslims to probe even more deeply the essential relationship between God and his world so that together we may strive to ensure that society resonates in harmony with the divine order. In this regard, the co-operation found here in Jordan sets an encouraging and persuasive example for the region, and indeed the world, of the positive, creative contribution which religion can and must make to civic society.”

UNITE TO PROMOTE GOOD: “Today I wish to refer to a task which I have addressed on a number of occasions and which I firmly believe Christians and Muslims can embrace, particularly through our respective contributions to learning and scholarship, and public service. That task is the challenge to cultivate for the good, in the context of faith and truth, the vast potential of human reason. Christians in fact describe God, among other ways, as creative Reason, which orders and guides the world. And God endows us with the capacity to participate in his reason and thus to act in accordance with what is good. Muslims worship God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who has spoken to humanity. And as believers in the one God we know that human reason is itself God’s gift and that it soars to its highest plane when suffused with the light of God’s truth. In fact, when human reason humbly allows itself to be purified by faith, it is far from weakened; rather, it is strengthened to resist presumption and to reach beyond its own limitations. In this way, human reason is emboldened to pursue its noble purpose of serving mankind, giving expression to our deepest common aspirations and extending, rather than manipulating or confining, public debate. Thus, genuine adherence to religion – far from narrowing our minds – widens the horizon of human understanding. It protects civil society from the excesses of the unbridled ego which tend to absolutize the finite and eclipse the infinite; it ensures that freedom is exercised hand in hand with truth, and it adorns culture with insights concerning all that is true, good and beautiful.

“Together, Christians and Muslims are impelled to seek all that is just and right. We are bound to step beyond our particular interests and to encourage others, civil servants and leaders in particular, to do likewise in order to embrace the profound satisfaction of serving the common good, even at personal cost. And we are reminded that because it is our common human dignity which gives rise to universal human rights, they hold equally for every man and woman, irrespective of his or her religious, social or ethnic group. In this regard, we must note that the right of religious freedom extends beyond the question of worship and includes the right – especially of minorities – to fair access to the employment market and other spheres of civic life.”

(Photo: Well-wishers in Madaba, 9 May 2009/Muhammad Hamed)

SPEECH AT UNIVERSITY OF MADABA:

CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN JORDAN: “I commend the promoters of this new institution for their courageous confidence in good education as a stepping-stone for personal development and for peace and progress in the region. In this context the University of Madaba will surely keep in mind three important objectives. By developing the talents and noble attitudes of successive generations of students, it will prepare them to serve the wider community and raise its living standards. By transmitting knowledge and instilling in students a love of truth, it will greatly enhance their adherence to sound values and their personal freedom. Finally, this same intellectual formation will sharpen their critical skills, dispel ignorance and prejudice, and assist in breaking the spell cast by ideologies old and new. The result of this process will be a university that is not only a platform for consolidating adherence to truth and to the values of a given culture, but a place of understanding and dialogue. While assimilating their own heritage, young Jordanians and other students from the region will be led to a deeper knowledge of human cultural achievements, will be enriched by other viewpoints, and formed in comprehension, tolerance and peace.”

FAITH SUPPORTS TRUTH: “Belief in God does not suppress the search for truth; on the contrary it encourages it. Saint Paul exhorted the early Christians to open their minds to “all that is true, all that is noble, all that is good and pure, all that we love and honor, all that is considered excellent or worthy of praise” (Phil 4:8). Religion, of course, like science and technology, philosophy and all expressions of our search for truth, can be corrupted. Religion is disfigured when pressed into the service of ignorance or prejudice, contempt, violence and abuse.

(Photo: Lebanese and Jordanian Christians greet Benedict in Madaba, 9 May 2009/Jamal Saidi)

“In this case we see not only a perversion of religion but also a corruption of human freedom, a narrowing and blindness of the mind. Clearly, such an outcome is not inevitable. Indeed, when we promote education, we proclaim our confidence in the gift of freedom. The human heart can be hardened by the limits of its environment, by interests and passions. But every person is also called to wisdom and integrity, to the basic and all-important choice of good over evil, truth over dishonesty, and can be assisted in this task.”

SCIENCE, WISDOM, HUMAN RIGHTS: “Science and technology offer extraordinary benefits to society and have greatly improved the quality of life of many human beings. Undoubtedly this is one of the hopes of those who are promoting this University, whose motto is Sapientia et Scientia. At the same time the sciences have their limitations. They cannot answer all the questions about man and his existence. Indeed the human person, his place and purpose in the universe cannot be contained within the confines of science… The use of scientific knowledge needs the guiding light of ethical wisdom. Such is the wisdom that inspired the Hippocratic Oath, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention and other laudable international codes of conduct. Hence religious and ethical wisdom, by answering questions of meaning and value, play a central role in professional formation. And consequently, those universities where the quest for truth goes hand in hand with the search for what is good and noble, offer an indispensable service to society.

CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM STUDENTS: “Dear friends… I pray that your dreams may soon come true, that you may see generations of qualified men and women Christian, Muslim and of other religions, taking their place in society, equipped with professional skills, knowledgeable in their field, and educated in the values of wisdom, integrity, tolerance and peace.”

SPEECH AT MOUNT NEBO:

THE SITE: “It is appropriate that my pilgrimage should begin on this mountain, where Moses contemplated the Promised Land from afar. The magnificent prospect which opens up from the esplanade of this shrine invites us to ponder how that prophetic vision mysteriously embraced the great plan of salvation which God had prepared for his People. For it was in the valley of the Jordan which stretches out below us that, in the fullness of time, John the Baptist would come to prepare the way of the Lord. It was in the waters of the River Jordan that Jesus, after his baptism by John, would be revealed as the beloved Son of the Father and, anointed by the Holy Spirit, would inaugurate his public ministry. And it was from the Jordan that the Gospel would first go forth in Christ’s own preaching and miracles, and then, after his resurrection and the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, be brought by his disciples to the very ends of the earth.”

(Photo: View from Mount Nebo into Jordan Valley, 9 May 2009/Ahmed Jadallah)

THE EXAMPLE OF MOSES: “Here, on the heights of Mount Nebo, the memory of Moses invites us to “lift up our eyes” to embrace with gratitude not only God’s mighty works in the past, but also to look with faith and hope to the future which he holds out to us and to our world. Like Moses, we too have been called by name, invited to undertake a daily exodus from sin and slavery towards life and freedom, and given an unshakeable promise to guide our journey. In the waters of Baptism, we have passed from the slavery of sin to new life and hope…

Moses gazed upon the Promised Land from afar, at the end of his earthly pilgrimage. His example reminds us that we too are part of the ageless pilgrimage of God’s people through history. In the footsteps of the prophets, the apostles and the saints, we are called to walk with the Lord, to carry on his mission, to bear witness to the Gospel of God’s universal love and mercy. We are called to welcome the coming of Christ’s Kingdom by our charity, our service to the poor, and our efforts to be a leaven of reconciliation, forgiveness and peace in the world around us. We know that, like Moses, we may not see the complete fulfilment of God’s plan in our lifetime. Yet we trust that, by doing our small part, in fidelity to the vocation each of us has received, we will help to make straight the paths of the Lord and welcome the dawn of his Kingdom.”

CHRISTIANS AND JEWS: “The ancient tradition of pilgrimage to the holy places also reminds us of the inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish people. From the beginning, the Church in these lands has commemorated in her liturgy the great figures of the Patriarchs and Prophets, as a sign of her profound appreciation of the unity of the two Testaments. May our encounter today inspire in us a renewed love for the canon of Sacred Scripture and a desire to overcome all obstacles to the reconciliation of Christians and Jews in mutual respect and cooperation in the service of that peace to which the word of God calls us!”

SERMON AT VESPERS IN GREEK-MELKITE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT GEORGE:

“The public face of your Christian faith is certainly not restricted to the spiritual solicitude you bear for one another and your people, essential though that is. Rather, your many works of universal charity extend to all Jordanians – Muslims and those of other religions – and also to the large numbers of refugees whom this Kingdom so generously welcomes…

(Photo: Iraqi Christian refugees greet Benedict outside St. George’s Cathedral, 9 May 2009/Muhammad Hamed)

“Your liturgies, ecclesiastical discipline and spiritual heritage are a living witness to your unfolding tradition. You amplify the echo of the first Gospel proclamation, you render fresh the ancient memories of the works of the Lord, you make present his saving graces and you diffuse anew the first glimmers of the Easter light and the flickering flames of Pentecost.

“In this way, imitating Christ and the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, we set out to lead people from the desert towards the place of life, towards the Lord who gives us life in abundance. This marks all your apostolic works, the variety and calibre of which are greatly appreciated. From kindergartens to places of higher education, from orphanages to homes for the elderly, from work with refugees to a music academy, medical clinics and hospitals, interreligious dialogue and cultural initiatives, your presence in this society is a marvellous sign of the hope that defines us as Christian.”

(Photo: Bethany baptismal pool with ruins of ancient basilicas in rear, a staircase to the water and, at right, two of the four massive pillars that used to hold a church above the baptism site, 6 May 2009/Tom Heneghan)

In John’s Gospel, verse 1:28, it says that John the Baptist used to baptise people in “Bethany beyond the Jordan” and Jesus went there for his own baptism. Seen from the perspective of Jerusalem, “beyond the Jordan” means on the river’s east bank, in present-day Jordan. Those words were added to distinguish that Bethany from the village near Jerusalem where Jesus was said to have raised Lazarus from the dead. Despite that, pilgrims have long visited a spot on the river’s west bank, now in an Israeli military zone in the Palestinian territories, and considered it the true site where Jesus was baptised.

For about a decade or so, Jordan has been contesting that claim with excavations at a site on the river’s east bank that it argues must be the real place. Following John’s Gospel (the others only speak of the river itself) and descriptions from pilgrims dating back to the fourth to twelfth centuries, Jordanian archeologists have uncovered ruins of five ancient churches and a wide array of other remains and artifacts pointing to the area’s use as a pilgrimage site.

(Photo: Israeli flag on west bank across Jordan River and Greek Orthodox church on the east bank Bethany site, 6 May 2009//Jamal Saidi)

Pope John Paul’s visit to Bethany in 2000 was a coup for Jordan, which is keen to establish its site as a major centre for Christian pilgrims. But he also slipped in a quick visit to Qasr al Yahud, the west bank site across the river, to avoid any impression of partiality. Pope Benedict doesn’t seem to have the same concern — he’s coming to Bethany only and not planning any stop at the rival site. See our news story on this here.

If you ever visit the site and have a stroke of luck, as a group of English pilgrims did when I toured the area on Wednesday, you’ll come across a bundle of energy named Rustom Mkhjian who explains the site’s claim to authenticity with nothing short of missionary zeal. Mkhjian, a Jordanian engineer and Armenian Orthodox Christian, is assistant director of the Baptism Site Commission. For the past 12 years, he has been working at the site unearthing the foundations of ancient churches and matching passages from the Bible to facts on the ground. He was showing me around when the English group came up to the baptismal pool and their Jordanian guide introduced him as the real expert to tell the story.

With that, Mkhjian, a wiry man of 49 who studied civil engineering in Britain and monument restoration in Rome, launched into a short presentation quoting the gospels of John and Luke and the main testimonies from pilgrims down the ages. This historical background is well explained on the informative Baptism Site website. The site also shows plans for the new churches being built a short walk from the baptismal site and a gallery of photos of VIP visitors to date.

For the issue of the rivalry with Qasr al Yahud, the pages under “authentication” are the most interesting. Over the past few years, several Christian denominations have written letters backing Bethany’s claim (and thanking Jordan for permission to build churches there). The latest was star U.S. evangelical pastor Rick Warren, who praised “the opening of this authentic site where Jesus (Peace be upon him) was baptized.” Editorial comment: that PBUH — a regular addition in Muslim countries for the Prophet Mohammad — seems like a translation from the Arabic. Warren must have written something positive, but I didn’t use this quote in my news story because it didn’t sound right.

(Photo: Tourists visit Bethany baptism site, 6 May 2009/Jamal Saidi)

Qasr al Yahud, which is still in an Israeli military zone and open only occasionally to Christian pilgrims, enjoys none of this promotion and apparently little or no similar evidence amassed to support its claim. In the original draft of my story, I wrote that Israel seemed to have lost interest in promoting it. But our Jerusalem bureau intervened to say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had just announced some economic aid programs for the Palestinian territories that included Qasr al Yahud. We inserted that into the story but still don’t have many details of what he plans.

The English pilgrimage group that borrowed Mkhjian from me for 10 minutes included some who had been here three years ago, when the pool was but a small puddle because the water table was lower at that part of the year. Wondering why it was now much bigger, one joked that it might have been filled up for the pope’s visit on Sunday. “You can’t bring a pope all this way just to see a puddle,” he quipped. As soon as I identified myself as a reporter and asked if I could quote him, the man seemed to think he’d said something sacrilegious and nervoslsy asked not to be named!

My photo on the  right shows the not-very-impressive Jordan River near the baptism site. Todays’s Jordan River is only about 10 metres (yards) wide and lies low in a riverbed lined by tamarinds and reeds. The baptism site is off to the right, on a flood plain about seven metres (yards) higher than the river. The Jordan used to be wider, but dams upstream have diverted much of its former flow for agricultural or industrial use.

U.S. President Barack Obama may face a new minefield on the battlefields of Afghanistan — one that combines a potent mix of religion and culture.

Explosive allegations have emerged that U.S. soldiers have been attempting to convert Afghanis to Christianity, a scenario sure to stir passions and even anger in the overwhelming Islamic country. You can see our story on the issue here by my colleague Peter Graff in Kabul.

The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of Bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: “The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”

Critics have long contended that parts of the U.S. military have been unduly influenced by a powerful evangelical Christian wing which has pressured men and women in uniform to convert or conform.

Many U.S. military events often feature public prayers which some also say blur the line they say should be drawn between church and state. We have blogged on this issue before.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has for years tried to raise public awareness about this issue and has in the past accused the military of sanctioning missionary activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Headed by former U.S. air force judge advocate Mikey Weinstein, it said on Monday that: “His (Weinstein’s) calls for action have been met with a full assault of denials, baseless and anti-Semitic accusations, and most recently imprecatory prayers against him and his family. But now there is VIDEO PROOF that Mikey has been right all along.”

The U.S. military has said that the comments from the sermon shown in the video were taken out of context and that it firmly prohibits soldiers from proseltyzing while on duty.

Whether this is true or not, there is no question that at least some damage has been done.

Here’s the Al Jazeera video:

(Photo: U.S. Marines bow their heads in prayer before the arrival of President Barack Obama at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, February 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES))

Annotated Bibles come in all shapes, sizes and standpoints. One of the most interesting recent examples is The New Community Bible in India. The novelty is not the text itself but the extensive footnotes comparing and contrasting Christian teachings with those of India’s main religions. Christians make up only 2.3% of India’s 1.1 billion population compared to 80% for Hindus and 13% for Muslims. The illustrations are also clearly Indian — in the drawing for the Flight to Egypt (at right), Mary wears a sari and a bindi on her forehead while Joseph sports a turban.

The New Community Bible (NCB) stirred up some controversy when it was published, with official Church approval, by a Roman Catholic group in Mumbai last summer. A Protestant pastor called it “a complete turn back from the real Bible.” Hindu natiotionalists denounced it as a bid to convert Hindus to Christianity. A blog named after Hindu guru (CORRECTED: see comment below) Sathya Sai Baba warned that Christian missionaries were “taking aim at India” with a “deceptive Bible and other questionable tactics.” . There was also criticism from Catholic laity, enough to prompt the bishops to order a study of the issue and have the publisher hold off with a second edition. That’s too bad because the first edition quickly sold out.

During my recent visit to India, I got a look at a friend’s copy of the NCB and found it fascinating. Following are a few points that stood out while I paged through it (and a few not very professional photos I took of its illustrations):

In Genesis:

• After its opening “in the beginning,” the footnote observes: “Even in the Upanishad, some creation accounts open with the word ‘agre’ (at the beginning)…”
• At the phrase “God saw that the light was good,” it notes: “Light is considered good and desirable also in the Vedas. The expression “TJ” is well known. Tamasoma jyotirgamaya…” Lead from from darkness to light… (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.3.28).”
  
• After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve “become shamefully conscious of their nakedness and plan a cover-up from God (3:7-8). To use Indian terminology, they regress into avidya, that is nescience or lack of right perspective, which causes alienation and suffering.”
  
• On Noah and the Flood - “There exist myths of the flood in almost every religion, and the Biblical acocunt shows some striking parallels to the Mesopotamian flood story. Satapath Brahmana (1.8.1-10) offers the earliest Indian version. The Mahabharata (3.187) also narrates a similar story.”
• On the Tower of Babel — “For the Yahwist author, Babel meant confusion, a athetic symbol of the folly of human pride and self-sufficiency… We can find modern Babels all around us, constructed by the stinking rich and proud politicians. Instead of using wealth and power to creatively solve the real problems of the people, they use these to bolster their own images and pamper their presitge. To make a name for themselves, they ignore, nay, trample down on the legitimate rights of millions of poor and oppressed people. The resentment and revolt this causes is another sort of babel, confusion, alienation.”

Since it’s aimed at today’s Indians, Bollywood naturally rates a mention. At the end of the Book of Job, when God restores Job’s fortunes, a footnote comments: “Like in modern TV soap operas and box-office films from Bollywood, ‘God’ reenters in the form of a deus ex machina who, with a word and a magic wand, restores everything to its earlier felicity and Job lived happily ever after.”

Not all references are to Hinduism. In Matthew’s nativity account, the NCB notes: The Koran, written some six hundred years after the Gospels (about AD 650), affirms the virginal conception of Jesus - called Isa, probably an Arabic form of the Syriac version of his name (Sura 19:16-22). This forms part of the common belief of Muslims. Interestingly, Joseph is not mentioned in the Koran… The wise men were priests of the Zoroastrian religion, which used to be the religion of Persia before the country was taken over and converted by Islam. It now survives as the religion of the Parsees in India… For Matthew, the magi are the highly respected religious leaders, representing non-Jewish religions.”

The NCB notes that Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by the Sermon on the Mount and uses Jesus’s criticism of the Jewish purity laws as an opportunity to make a wider point about Indian society today: “The same kind of distinction underlies the caste system in India. The ‘dalits’ are treated as ‘untouchables’ by the so-called ‘clean’ castes, because the kind of work they do brings them into touch with ‘polluting’ things and so makes them in Hindu society ritually impure. Jesus completely abolishes this kind of purity/pollution distinction. He shows that true ‘purity’ (that is, fitness for worshipping God) does not depend on external things but upon the attitudes of the heart.”

The illustrations also make points about modern-day India. In the Exodus story of Moses and the burning bush, the NCB notes that God told Moses to take off his sandals because he was on holy ground. The accompanying illustration (below) shows modern footwear in front of a church, a mosque and Hindu and Sikh temples. “Every religion is deserving of our respect, even if we do not accept all of their cultural and social wrappings,” the footnote says. “As Mahatma Gandhi said, respect for other religions helps us to understand our own religion better.”

The NCB tries to explain Christianity in the Indian context, both to Christians living in a culture marked much more by other religions and Indians of other faiths trying to understand the Christians among them. Why should that be controversial?

The start of a high-powered Vatican-sponsored acadmeic conference on evolution was anything but fossilized.

The third STOQ International Conference, called Biological Evolution, Facts and Theories, began on Tuesday at the Pontifical Gregorian University (picture right) under the patronage of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture.

The conference, which has been organised together with the University of Notre Dame to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, had barely gotten underway when charges of censorship and undemocratic and unacademic behaviour began flying.

At the end of the first session Oktar Babuna, a Turkish doctor and collaborator of prominent Turkish anti-Darwin campaigner Harun Yahya,asked for the floor to put forward a question. Babuna, a proponent of the Islamic creationist campaign against evolution, spoke about his view that there were insufficient transitional forms from species to species to support the theory of evolution.

After he began speaking two professors on the dias, Francisco J. Ayala of the University of California at Irvine and Douglas Futuyma of the State University of New York were visibly irritated. Someone in the hall can be heard saying “turn the microphone off” and seconds later two organisers approached Babuna. One of them abruptly took the microphone away from Babuna and another ordered him to go back to his seat. Watch it all here

“After I walked back to my seat someone said “only evolutionists can ask questions,” Babuna told Reuters afterwards. “This is very anti-democratic and very unacademic. If this is a scientific meeting … if you have scientific questions to ask, they should be responded to scientifically, everybody accepts that … if you force people to shut up and don’t let them ask any question … then it is not a scientific theory but an ideology.” The spat was filmed by Babuna’s associate Dr Cihat Gundogdu, who put an edited version on the Harun Yahya website.

Both men attended the conference with English and Italian versions of Harun Yahya’s super-slick mega-book Atlas of Creation (picture left) in hand. We have done numerous blogs on Islamic creationism, its proponents and its opponents. Some of the links are listed below. But what do you think about the debate and, more importantly, do you think officials at the Gregorian University were right or wrong to yank the microphone from Babuna at a scientific conference?

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/02/05/just-before-darwin-day-pew-reviews-faith-and-evolution-in-us/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/12/24/a-one-stop-shop-for-the-latest-on-islamic-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/11/25/harun-yahya-dangles-big-prizes-for-creationism-essays/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/10/27/richard-dawkins-rips-into-harun-yahya-and-muslim-creationism/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/06/19/harun-yahya-preaches-islam-slams-darwin-and-awaits-jesus/

http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2008/04/07/harun-yahyas-islamic-creationist-book-pops-up-in-scotland/