A new on-line forum launched on Tuesday seeks to spark discussion among faith and secular leaders and activists about ways to find some elusive common ground on the divisive issue of abortion.

It’s being rolled out by RH Reality Check, which focuses on reproductive health and rights issues, and can be seen here.

The initial posts include contributions from David Gushee of Mercer University, a leading intellectual figure in the emerging “evangelical center movement,” Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life, and Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.

Paris says in her blog that common ground on abortion can surely be found. After all, people from different faith traditions and sides of the political spectrum have come together on issues like climate change and torture.

Waldman says that his “common ground fantasy” would involve “a pro-life leader standing up and declaring, ‘We will be open to looking at family planning efforts, including contraception, to reduce the number of abortions.’  This would be followed by a pro-choicer saying, ’we accept that society would be better if there were fewer abortions.’”

There are already land mines there. The Catholic Church for one is unlikely to drop its opposition to birth control. And some abortion rights supporters don’t want to give any ground that they feel could show they have moral qualms with abortion.

A tall order indeed but there are thoughtful people on both sides of this highly charged debate who are starting to move in this direction.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signaled he is looking for common ground on the issue, for example by finding ways and funding programs to reduce the number of abortions. But Waldman points out that many supporters of abortion rights and even some key people in the Obama administration have pointedly stressed the importance of reducing the “need” for abortion instead of the idea of abortion reduction.

Abortion is a huge political issue that usually (though not always) follows starkly partisan lines in America: Republicans oppose abortion rights, the Democratic Party supports them.

The killing of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in a Kansas church last month has highlighted the more polarized side of the debate in America.

But polls show varying degrees of ambiguity on the issue and those who are weary of America’s culture wars will no doubt welcome this initiative. Some may dismiss it as a gab fest while the real culture warriors dig in and stoke the bases of both parties. But at least some people are talking.

(PHOTO: Anti-abortion activist Craig Kuhns wears mirrored sunglasses and a piece of tape over his mouth as he stands in front of the US Supreme Court building in Washington, June 1, 2009. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (UNITED STATES)

When President Barack Obama delivers his long-awaited speech in Cairo on Thursday, will he address the Muslim world or the Arab world? In the pre-speech build-up, it’s being called a speech “to the Muslim world” or “to the world’s 1.x billion Muslims” (the estimated total mentioned in different articles fluctuates between 1and 1.5 billion). But the venue he’s chosen — Cairo — and all the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict make it sound like a speech to and about the Middle East.

(Photo: President Barack Obama, 21 May 2009/Kevin Lamarque)

The Middle East is the heartland of Islam, but Arabs make up only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims. Not all Arabs are Muslims. And non-Arab Iran is a major part of the Middle Eastern political scene. So is it correct to call this a speech to the Muslim world? Would it be better to call it a speech to the Middle East?

There is such an important overlap between the Arab and the Muslim worlds that it is hard to disentangle them. The Palestinian issue concerns Muslims around the world, but with varying intensity depending partly on whether it figures in regional politics or stands as a more distant symbol of oppression against Muslims. Politics can also poison Muslim relations with Jews, which can range from bitter enmity to interfaith cooperation depending on where, when and how one looks. The U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq may be justified in Washington as operations against international terrorism, but in Muslim countries they are often seen as attacks on Muslims and Islam.

When this speech was first announced as an address to the Muslim world, I blogged here and here that he should deliver it in Turkey or Indonesia because they were doing more to reconcile Islam and modern democracy than any Arab state. “As a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses,” I wrote.

(Photo: Cairo at dusk, 14 April 2009/Tarek Mostafa)

The pressing question of how Islam relates to politics and society in the 21st century has an important religious component, because any adaptation or development would have to come from within a tradition that looks to religious authority to bless important changes. A speech addressing this would necessarily have to deal with religion, which is after all what Muslim countries have in common regardless of their geography, ethnicity, languages, traditions or politics.

Articles looking ahead to the speech focus mostly on the political, i.e. the Middle East peace process. Reuters has run a long curtainraiser today entitled “Obama to address tough issues in speech to Muslims” that touches on the Middle East, oil and international terrorism (BTW “speech to Muslims” is a neat way to get around the problem under discussion here). Washington also ran “Q+A: Why is Obama speech to Muslim world important?” and an earlier analysis on May 31 entitled “PREVIEW-Obama speech to Muslims key to new U.S. strategy.” That analysis mixed the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, saying “President Barack Obama will try to repair America’s tarnished image in the Muslim world on Thursday, as he looks to mobilize support for restarting Middle East peacemaking and thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Another article by our Middle East Special Correspondent Alistair Lyon, “Muslims want more than fine talk from Obama,” shows how complex all this is. Surveying opinion across the Muslim world, he found the Palestinian issue stood out as their main concern. But wider issues also emerged, for example a general desire to feel the U.S. president respects Muslims and Islam — a message Obama has already been sending. As for the venue, it seems that Arabs found the choice of Cairo very appropriate while a Malaysian and an Iranian Lyon quoted thought it was a bad choice.

(Photo: Fireworks at Malaysia’s Putra Mosque near Kuala Lumpur, 31 Aug 2003/Bazuki Muhammad)

In one of its pre-speech articles, the New York Times wrote that “when President Obama delivers a much-anticipated speech in Cairo, he will be addressing so many audiences, and seeking to advance so many agendas, that even his oratorical gifts are likely to be taxed.”

How do you think Obama should pitch his speech? Is it possible to juggle both the immediate political concerns of the Middle East with wider issues concerning the whole Muslim world? Or is it impossible not to?

The latest issue of The Economist has a provocative essay on Darwinism asking if Charles Darwin’s insights can be used profitably by policymakers. You can read it online here.

“America … executes around 40 people a year for murder. Yet it still has a high murder rate. Why do people murder each other when they are almost always caught and may, in America at least, be killed themselves as a result?” it asks.

It goes on to ask why men still earn more than women 40 years after the feminist revolution and why racism persists.

“Traditionally, the answers to such questions, and many others about modern life, have been sought in philosophy, sociology, even religion. But the answers that have come back are generally unsatisfying. They describe, rather than explain. They do not get to the nitty-gritty of what it truly is to be human. Policy based on them does not work. This is because they ignore the forces that made people what they are: the forces of evolution.” it says.

The essay is not proposing some new theory of eugenics or related nonsense — it just lays out interesting areas where human behavior may be explained by evolution and asks if this could help inform public policy.

What is of particular interest to readers of this blog is the waves that Darwin’s theory of natural selection — more popularly referred to as his theory of evolution — has stirred among many of the world’s religious faithful. And as 2009 will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On The Origin of Species,” one can expect a flood of Darwin-related debates and publications in the coming months.

The late American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote on the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s seminal work that “… mankind has lived so long under the brilliant light of evolutionary science that we tend to take its insights for granted.”

Fifty years later, in Hofstadter’s America, many evangelical Christians dispute the claim that Darwin’s theory provides “insights.” They argue that the Bible is the literal word of God and any theory that suggests organisms evolved over hundreds of millions of years or that we are related to the Great Apes cannot be true.

Proponents of “Intelligent Design” maintain that life is so complex that it must have had a creator. Critics say this is biblical creationism under a different name and that its claims to use scientific methods are absurd.

Darwin’s theory has long been the foundation of modern biological inquiry. Its supporters,  nearly all of the scientific community, draw on an abundance of evidence to support their view, including the diversity of life on islands, even those in close proximity to each other.

This highlights how isolation appears to spur evolution in different directions, which is what got Darwin going in the first place.

We have written and blogged at length on Darwin’s reception among various religious groups. The Vatican believes the theory of natural selection is compatible with the Bible; within the Islamic world there is a growing creationist movement.

Darwin is certain to stir up more fiery debates in 2009.

Where is the dividing line between acceptable and unacceptable criticism of religion? How should the media cover issues that offend certain believers? These issues came up at last week’s Catholic-Muslim Forum in Rome and in the public editor’s column in the Sunday New York Times. In both cases, useful distinctions were made. But I’m not sure how much agreement they will produce the next time someone finds a depiction of a religion, its beliefs or its symbols outrageous.

(Photo:Filipino Muslims protest outside Danish embassy in Manila, 15 Feb 2006)

The Catholic-Muslim Forum, an unprecedented meeting between Vatican and Muslim leaders and scholars, approached the issue as one of the rights of a minority religion, since cases they are concerned about — such as the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad — involved criticism of a minority faith by the local majority. They agreed that “religious minorities are entitled to be respected in their own religious convictions and practices … and their founding figures and symbols they consider sacred should not be subject to any form of mockery or ridicule.”

When I asked Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic delegation, whether this meant the Vatican would support moves to limit criticism of religion that some western critics see as censorship, he said: “One must distinguish between a critical spirit, a spirit of criticism, and mockery. Freedom of speech means that we have the right to express opinions about religion, philosophy, philosophers and theologians and founders of religion. That is one thing. But deriding them and mocking them is something else… That impacts the values on which millions of people base their lives. That’s why we talk about mockery. I introduced that term… Mockery is very strong.”

New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt took up the issue on Sunday in dissecting his paper’s review of a play portraying Jesus as a sexually active gay man. Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, called it a vile play and said the Times liked it “not for artistic purposes but for its assault on Catholicism.” He urged his members to write to the public editor, and more than 150 did. While Hoyt found some of the protests over the top, he noted that the review was one-sided. It called the play “an earnest and reverent spin on the Jesus story, with some soft-spoken, gay-friendly politics thrown in” but never told readers why Christians might be offended. If the review had mentioned the fact that gay sex and same-sex marriage are against the teachings of the Church, the Times would have done its duty in presenting the pros and cons of this issue, he said.

(Photo: South African stamp for 2001 Durban conference)

We’re going to hear more about this issue in the months to come because Muslim countries are campaigning to have the United Nations approve a ban on published material that defames or promotes disrespect for religion. This will be a central issue at the April 2009 conference in Geneva following up on the 2001 Durban World Conference on Racism. Opposition to this has been gathering steam (see here and here and here).

Do you think the United Nations or any government can determine where the line between criticism and blasphemy lies?

Today is Reformation Day, the anniversary of the day in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg in eastern Germany and set off the Protestant Reformation. It is a public holiday in the five eastern German states, in Slovenia and — this year for the first time — in Chile.

Chile? Isn’t that traditionally a Catholic country? Even the Catholic parts of Germany don’t celebrate Reformation Day.

Yes, Chile is traditionally Catholic, but now only about 70% so. Like elsewhere in Latin America, Protestant churches — especially evangelicals and Pentecostals — have spread rapidly in recent decades. They now make up just over 15% of the Chilean population, up from 7% in 1970. It’s not a new story, but creating a holiday especially for Protestants is a symbolic step towards recognising the changes in the religious landscape in Latin America.

The holiday is not officially called Reformation Day but Día Nacional de las Iglesias Evangélicas y Protestantes — National Day of the Evangelical and Protestant Churches. President Michelle Bachelet mentioned the Luther link in a speech (here in Spanish) about the new holiday, which she stressed was a sign of equality of faiths in Chile’s secular state. She also called it a form of recognition of the contribution made by the evangelical churches to national progress in all fields, of their preaching of values that enrich our existence and strengthen the culture of tolerance and respect.”

Do you think if other Latin American countries will follow Santiago’s example? Should they?

Apropos Luther, Der Spiegel has an interesting article in English about how Wittenberg — whose population is only 10% Protestant — may be in for a remake to turn it into “a true Protestant Rome” . This is part of the preparations for the 500th anniversary of Reformation Day in 2017. But Calvin Year (“Calvin09″), the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, is coming up soon and Geneva will certainly play up its claim to that title.

A non-religious Kansas soldier is suing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the grounds that his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to attend military events where “fundamentalist Christian prayers” were recited.

Specialist Dustin Chalker’s cause has been taken up by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which is joining him in the suit.

The MRFF said in a statement that Chalker, a decorated Iraq war veteran stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, “was forced to attend three events in late 2007 and in 2008  at which the battalion chaplain …  delivered  sectarian Christian prayers”.

“Being nonreligious, Chalker objected  … and asked to be  excused from the events.  The requests to be excused were denied.   After the denials, Chalker was forced to attend other events with  sectarian Christian prayers.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas last week, seeks an injunction to prevent such  sectarian prayers from being delivered at mandatory military events.

It is the second such suit filed by MRFF and the other is still pending in a federal court. A spokesman at the Department of Justice, which is expected to defend the Department of Defence, said it had not been served with the papers yet.

Prayer and military events often coincide in the United States. Prayers are often evoked at homecoming ceremonies when soldiers return from overseas tours; off base, civilian events such as rodeos often feature marching soldiers and prayers.

Some activist groups such as the MRFF say evangelical Christianity is being promoted in the U.S. military through peer pressure, calls to prayer and other means.

Critics say this violates the separation of Church and state and creates a potential diplomatic minefield with U.S. forces waging wars in two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.  

The Department of Defense’s watchdog has in the  past taken action on the issue, for example when it chastised a U.S. army general a few years ago for making speeches in which  he described the “war on terror” as a Christian battle against Satan.

A rabbi, a Mennonite and a Zoroastrian priest were having dinner with the president of Iran — sounds like the start of a joke, but it happened in New York this week.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had dinner with around 200 people of various faiths including Mennonites, Quakers, United Methodists, Jews and Zoroastrians who said they wanted to promote peace by meeting such a prominent foe of the United States.  You can read our story about the meeting here.

Those who attended the Iftar meal in a Manhattan hotel ballroom had to brave a line of protesters outside who accused them of sitting down with a man little better than Hitler. Major Jewish groups had urged the cancellation of the event.

It was billed as a panel discussion titled: “What does my faith tradition bring to the struggle to eliminate poverty, injustice, global warming and war?”

Speakers included U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, who is a Catholic priest, and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell-Magne Bondevik, who is a Lutheran, as well as Ahmadinejad.

“I stand here today, even when many of my co-religionists are dismissing, demeaning or boycotting this important conversation,” Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb said in her speech, arguing that it was her obligation to engage in dialogue in order to seek peace.

Arli Klassen, executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, said she welcomed the presence of the protesters outside. “I respect their right to have their opinion. It’s especially important where we’re talking to a country where these rights (to protest) are not met in the same way,” she told Reuters.

“I respectfully disagree (with them) because I believe it’s important to dialogue, especially when there are differences,” she said. “The consequences of not dialoguing are very severe.”

John Brademas, a former Democratic congressman and trustee of a group called Religions for Peace, told the audience religious cooperation could build bridges.

“As people of faith, we want to advocate our respective governments, including the governments of Iran and the United States, to resolve their conflicts through dialogue.”

The previous day, Ahmadinejad had met rabbis from a fringe group of ultra-religious Jews who seek the dismantling of the state of Israel.

The rabbis from Neturei Karta International, or Jews United Against Zionism, had showered Ahmadinejad with praise and presented him with a gift of an ornate silver cup.

The church representatives at Thursday’s dinner were less friendly, taking the Iranian leader to task over his comments minimizing the Holocaust and urging him to tone down his rhetoric about Israel. Only a few dozen of the 200 or so at the dinner stood to applaud at the end of his speech, and many of them were from the Iranian mission.

Rohinton Dadina, a Zoroastrian priest who said a prayer at the dinner, said if Ahmadinejad’s views were changed even 1 percent by what he heard, it was worth holding such events.

“The main reason I wanted to come is I’m hoping that this event would have some influence on President Ahmadinejad in terms of him toning down his rhetoric, him looking towards peace,” Dadina told Reuters.

Earlier this week, Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel urged the United Nations to indict Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide rather than allow him to speak at the U.N. General Assembly. His speech there on Tuesday was denounced by Western leaders, human rights groups and Jewish organizations as anti-Semitic.

Tell us what you think — should people of faith talk to Ahmadinejad? Or should the world shun him as an outcast? Is religion fomenting tension or can it help solve the problems between Iran and the United States?

PICTURE: REUTERS/Claudia Parsons and Lucas Jackson (Ahmadinejad greets religious leaders as he arrives at the dinner (top), listens as Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb speaks, and speaks at the U.N. General Assembly)

The French are a tough audience to please and speaking to them about church-state relations is a tall order. Pope Benedict got right down to it at the start of his visit to France, using his courtesy call on President Nicolas Sarkozy to outline his view of the role religion should play in the public sphere. Fluent in French and well-read in the country’s history and culture, he made several interesting points in his short speech.

Here’s the part on church-state relations:

During your visit to Rome, Mr President, you called to mind that the roots of France – like those of Europe – are Christian. History itself offers sufficient proof of this: from its origins, your country received the Gospel message. Even though documentary evidence is sometimes lacking, the existence of Christian communities in Gaul is attested from a very early period: it is moving to recall that the city of Lyon already had a bishop in the mid-second century, and that Saint Irenaeus, the author of Adversus Haereses, gave eloquent witness there to the vigour of Christian thought. Saint Irenaeus came from Smyrna to preach faith in the Risen Christ. This bishop of Lyons spoke Greek as his mother tongue. Could there be a more beautiful sign of the universal nature and destination of the Christian message? The Church, established at an early stage in your country, played a civilizing role there to which I am pleased to pay tribute on his occasion. You spoke of it yourself, during your address at the Lateran Palace last December. The transmission of the culture of antiquity through monks, professors and copyists, the formation of hearts and spirits in love of the poor, the assistance given to the most deprived by the foundation of numerous religious congregations, the contribution of Christians to the establishment of the institutions of Gaul, and later France, all of this is too well known for me to dwell on it. The thousands of chapels, churches, abbeys and cathedrals that grace the heart of your towns or the tranquility of your countryside speak clearly of how your fathers in faith wished to honour him who had given them life and who sustains us in existence.

Many people, here in France as elsewhere, have reflected on the relations between Church and State. Indeed, Christ had already offered the basic criterion upon which a just solution to the problem of relations between the political sphere and the religious sphere could be found. He does this when, in answer to a question, he said: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk 12:17). The Church in France currently benefits from a “regime of freedom”. Past suspicion has been gradually transformed into a serene and positive dialogue that continues to grow stronger. A new instrument of dialogue has been in place since 2002, and I have much confidence in its work, given the mutual good will. We know that there are still some areas open to dialogue, which we will have to pursue and redevelop step by step with determination and patience. You yourself, Mr President, have used the expression “laïcité positive” to characterise this more open understanding. At this moment in history when cultures continue to cross paths more frequently, I am firmly convinced that a new reflection on the true meaning and importance of laïcité is now necessary. In fact, it is fundamental, on the one hand, to insist on the distinction between the political realm and that of religion in order to preserve both the religious freedom of citizens and the responsibility of the State towards them; and, on the other hand, to become more aware of the irreplaceable role of religion for the formation of consciences and the contribution which it can bring to—among other things—the creation of a basic ethical consensus within society.

The light being cast on China by the coming Summer Games is far brighter than the flickering Olympic flame now wending its way across that vast country. Politics, society, human rights, the status of Tibet and even the environment have been widely discussed.

Now a window has been opened on faith and religion in a country where six decades of Communist philosophy and rule might seem to have pushed those subjects into obscurity.

In a recent report the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has analyzed available surveys, some a few years old, and concluded that 31 percent of the Chinese population considers religion to be very or somewhat important in their lives, with only 11 percent rating it as meaningless. Even the exact starting time of the Summer Olympics is rooted in Confucianism and Chinese folk religions,  the report adds, where the numeral 8 is revered for its luck and power. The games will start on the 8th day of the 8th month of ‘08 at precisely 8 minutes and 8 seonds past 8 o’clock.

This does not mean that religious affiliation is high in China. Only one in five adults has an active connection, the report says, with one of the country’s five major religions — Buddhism (by far the largest single group), Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam and Taoism. That compares to 8 in every 10 adults in the United States who claim a religious affiliation.

But a recent report from East China Normal University in Shanghai appearing in state-approved media said that about 300 million Chinese over 16 — slghtly less than a third of the population in that age group — are religious, perhaps indicating the government has given recognition to the depth of religious sentiment.

The question is whether China’s modernization brought about by its economic engine will bring religion into society in a bigger way. The report notes that Hu Jintao, general secretary of the country’s Communist Party, earlier this year told the Chinese Politburo the leadedrship should try to “closely unite religious figures and believers … to build an all-around … prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism.”

Photo credits: Reuters/Bobby Yip/David Gray

Remember ping-pong diplomacy, the exchange of ping-pong players between the United States and communist China in the 1970s that was one of the first steps that led to a thaw in relations between the two countries? If the Vatican had a ping-pong team, perhaps China would have considered sending their squad to the walled city in Rome for a match.

But the Vatican does not have a ping-pong team, as far as we know. So, the next best thing appears to be music. This week, Vatican Radio made a surprise announcement on its daily 2 p.m. bulletin. The China Philharmonic Orchestra of Beijing and the Shanghai Opera House Chorus will perform Mozart’s Requiem for Pope Benedict on May 7 in the Vatican’s audience hall, adding a stop to its already scheduled European tour.

As one diplomat said, “this could not have happened without the Beijing government approving it.” Given the fact that relations between the Vatican and Beijing have been scratchy to say the least, one can only wonder if this is the start of a mating game. It could lead to diplomatic relations and China’s recognition of the pope as leader of all Catholics in the world, including Chinese Catholics, many of whom have been forced to join the state-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

Something seemed afoot in the last few months. In November, Monsignor Pietro Parolin, undersecretary for relations with states, was reported to have made a secret visit to China. The Vatican never denied the reports. In March, a Chinese delegation secretly had talks in the Vatican, sources confirmed.

One precedent for baton diplomacy that comes to mind is a similar event that happened in the Vatican on February 20, 1988 when the now mostly-forgotten Cold War still existed.

The then-Soviet Union’s Red Army Choir performed for Pope John Paul, singing, of all things, Ave Maria. It, too, was a shocker when it was announced. But on Dec 1, 1989, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made his historic visit to the Vatican, turning relations between the Kremlin and the Vatican on their head after some 70 years of mutual distrust. Relations between Russia and the Vatican were established in 1990 and the rest, as they say, is history.

So, if music be the food of diplomacy, play on.