May 31, 2011 | 10:55 pm

Ultra-Orthodox group: Before reporting abuse, consult a rabbi

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Haven’t we learned anything from past religious sexual abuse scandals? Apparently not.

The Forward reports on the absurd hurdles to reporting abuse put up by on ultra-Orthodox Jewish group:

At the daylong “Halacha Conference for Professionals,” held in Brooklyn on May 15, speakers elaborated on a recent ruling by Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, one of ultra-Orthodoxy’s foremost authorities on Jewish religious law, or Halacha. Elyashiv recently decreed that Jews with reasonable suspicions that a case of sexual abuse has occurred are permitted to go to secular law enforcement authorities, notwithstanding traditional religious prohibitions against mesirah, or informing on fellow Jews.

But at a panel discussion titled “Molestation Issues and Reporting: Current Halachic Thinking,” the panel’s leader, Rabbi Shlomo Gottesman, cautioned that Elyashiv never explained what constitutes “reasonable suspicion.” To establish this, Gottesman said, a person should consult a rabbi “who has experience in these issues” before going to secular authorities.

“If [the rabbi] thinks reasonable suspicion has been met, then you would be allowed to overcome mesirah and report,” said Gottesman, a board member of Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools.

Except, what happens when the rabbi, like so many Roman Catholic bishops and rabbinical leaders from the ultra-Orthodox community have before, don’t think the abuse should be reported? The abuse rolls on.

May 30, 2011 | 12:55 pm

Back to the present after the ‘End’ fails to come

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

So what happens when your family has put everything into the belief that the world was going to end but instead life goes on? See Harold Camping, May 21, 2011.

The New York Times had an interesting exploration of how the end-is-nigh beliefs were affecting families. Here’s what was going on before May 21 for the Haddad family:

The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.

The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to “sound the trumpet” on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.

But what now? Now that the end has not come as Harold Camping proclaimed it would. (You have to wonder what the Haddads did after Y2K.) Do they return to normal life or do they wait to see if the end actually comes in October, per Camping’s mulligan?

Time will tell. When it does, I’d like to read that story.

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May 30, 2011 | 9:17 am

The bizarre experience of discovering your beliefs are not alone

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Alan Jacobs had a great line in his Wall Street Journal column this month that could not have been more spot-on to what I experienced when I arrived at UCLA as a green 18-year-old. In discussing the new secular studies department at Pitzer College, Jacobs wrote:

It might be good for some secularists to think more historically and critically about their own convictions. This can be a challenging experience—as it has been for many young believers who have gone off to college and learned for the first time that beliefs that have seemed obviously true to them are not quite so compelling to others. Some of these believers change their minds, but many emerge from their college years with their beliefs largely intact. Perhaps young secularists will be equally resilient.

It’s that middle part that reminds me of how odd I found it to find not other students but other in fact Christians who didn’t believe the same things I did.

For more on this phenomenon, check out this story about the intersection of God and grades on college campuses.

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May 29, 2011 | 5:37 pm

Crystal Cathedral to be bought for apartment construction

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m not sure if this qualifies as continuing bad news for the Crystal Cathedral or a bit of good news amid bankruptcy reorganization. From the New York Times:

Crystal Cathedral Ministries, known for the towering Orange County megachurch where “Hour of Power” is taped, has agreed to sell its campus to a real estate investment group as part of a plan to emerge from bankruptcy.

The real estate group, Greenlaw Partners, is paying $46 million for the property — almost exactly the same as the amount that the Crystal Cathedral owes its creditors. The sale will allow the church to “immediately eliminate” most of its debts, while continuing religious services at its current location and broadcasts of “Hour of Power,” according to church officials.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the developer will build apartments on the Disneyland-adjacent property but will lease back the cathedral to the church for continued use.

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May 29, 2011 | 1:17 pm

Francis Chan: Hell is real

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Francis Chan, the super popular megachurch pastor who went MIA last fall, has re-emerged with news that he’s at work on his third book. The book is titled “Erasing Hell: What God said about eternity, and the things we made up,” and I have to imagine it offers a response to Rob Bell’s “Love Wins.” Chan talks about the book in the above video.

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May 27, 2011 | 1:55 pm

Roman scientists indicted for failing to predict deadly earthquake

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ridiculous news out of Rome:

Seven scientists and other experts were indicted on manslaughter charges yesterday for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn residents before a devastating earthquake that killed more than 300 people in central Italy in 2009.

Defense lawyers condemned the charges, saying it is impossible to predict earthquakes. Seismologists have long concurred, saying that the technology does not exist to predict a quake, and that no major temblor has ever been foretold.

Judge Giuseppe Romano Gargarella ordered the members of the national government’s Great Risks commission, which evaluates potential for natural disasters, to go on trial in L’Aquila on Sept. 20.

In sending me this story, Jay remarked that there’s nothing religious in this story. Except how do you charge someone for failing to predict what is usually regarded as an “Act of God?”

I’ve read a few books on earthquakes—actually just finished “A Dangerous Place” last week—and everything credible that I’ve read has made it pretty clear you can’t predict earthquakes. Scientists have tried. But there is just no reliable way to do it.

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May 26, 2011 | 5:31 pm

Tiki Barber: I’m just like Anne Frank

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

As if Tiki Barber hadn’t already taken a deep enough plunge from grace, now he’s comparing himself to Anne Frank. Via ESPNNewYork.com:

The former New York Giants running back has been criticized in local media for making the analogy during an interview in this week’s Sports Illustrated. At one point in the article, Barber describes going into hiding with his girlfriend after his well-publicized breakup with his then-pregnant wife. Barber and his girlfriend ended up in the attic of the home of the player’s agent, Mark Lepselter.

“Lep’s Jewish,” Barber told Sports Illustrated. “And it was like a reverse Anne Frank thing.”

Lepselter came to his client’s defense Thursday.

“In a world where nothing surprises me, where things get completely blown out of proportion, this only adds to the list,” Lepselter told ESPNNewYork.com. “All Tiki was saying to Jon was he was shedding light on going back to that time when he was literally trapped, so to speak, in my attic for a week. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Let me remind all those who want to make this more than it is: Tiki was a guest of [president] Shimon Peres in Israel five years ago.”

Yeah, and I bet some of Tiki’s best friends—and business partners—are Jewish.

Maybe the comment is being “blown out of proportion”—what in sports news isn’t?—but for a guy who left football because he thought he’d make an awesome broadcaster, Tiki really needs to watch his words.

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May 25, 2011 | 3:04 pm

Study: evangelical Christians have smaller brains

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No, this is not a report from The Onion. This is a real study, funded by the N.I.H. and the Templeton Foundation, and it found that mainline Protestants have larger brains than evangelicals, Roman Catholics and the “religiously unaffiliated.”

But why?

RNS reports:

Researchers speculate it may have something to do with the stress of belonging to a minority group. Chronic stress floods the brain with hormones that, over time, may damage the hippocampus.

Sociologists of religion, meanwhile, aren’t buying it. They say the researchers’ theory flies in the face of U.S. religious demographics. While it’s true that evangelicals are a minority, they’re a sizable one—40% of the U.S. population, according to Gallup Polls—and not exactly a stressed-out minority, especially in the South.

I’m not really buying that explanation, and sociologists aren’t either. I’m just waiting for one of them to suggest that it’s a self-selecting thing: dumb people are more likely to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible.

I, of course, would also disagree with that explanation (maybe out of self-defense). It’s not clear from the RNS article whether the researchers controlled for other demographics, but I would anticipate they did. That being said, what is the most accurate explanation for the disparity in the size of the hippocampus?

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May 23, 2011 | 11:18 pm

Harold Camping remix: Whoops, End is coming in ... October

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Obviously, Harold Camping’s apocalyptic predictions of May 21 end of the world was a little off. Actually, according to Camping, it was exactly five months off. That’s right. The End is still near. Try October.

The New York Times has more on Camping’s rambling address, which can be heard in the above clip:

In a rambling, 90-minute speech, broadcast both online and on his stations, Harold Camping, whose Family Radio network paid millions of dollars to promote his prediction, said that he was stunned when the rapture did not happen on Saturday.

“I can tell you very candidly that when May 21 came and went it was a very difficult time for me, a very difficult time,” said Mr. Camping, 89, a former civil engineer. “I was truly wondering what is going on. In my mind, I went back through all of the promises God has made, all of the proofs, all of the signs and everything was fitting perfectly, so what in the world happened? I really was praying and praying and praying, oh Lord, what happened?”

What he decided, apparently, was that May 21 had been “an invisible judgment day,” of the spiritual variety, rather than his original vision of earthquakes and other disasters leading to five months of hell on earth, culminating in a spectacular doomsday on Oct. 21 — something he had repeatedly guaranteed. On Monday, however, Mr. Camping seemed satisfied with his new interpretation, which apparently spared humankind its months of torture for a single day of destruction.

Right ...

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May 23, 2011 | 1:07 pm

Deadly twister cripples Joplin, Mo.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Two thousand eleven is starting to look a lot like 2005 on the natural-disaster front. First the Japanese earthquake and tsunami; then tornadoes in the South that killed nearly 300; and last night, Missouri was rocked by a tornado that killed at least 90—and climbing.

Here is the story of that disaster from The New York Times:

“There was panic—firefighters were pulling themselves out of the debris and then helping others,” said Mike Bettes, a meteorologist for the Weather Channel who arrived in Joplin 10 minutes after the tornado touched down, as part of the show “The Great Tornado Hunt.”

Hours later, he said, the scene was “very serene—dark, relatively quiet.” He and his Weather Channel crew had set up to report from the hospital grounds, he said in a telephone interview, and “we are on a hill and the only lights we see are on the fire trucks or ambulances.”

Joplin’s was by far the worst damage on a day of brutal storms in the Midwest, including a tornado in Minneapolis that city officials said left one person dead and dozens injured in an area that covered several blocks. By Sunday night, Missouri’s governor, Jay Nixon, had already activated the National Guard and declared a state of emergency.

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May 23, 2011 | 9:58 am

Is Jon Hunstman afraid of anti-Mormon voters?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jon Huntsman is bright enough to know that one of the things that slowed down Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign was his Mormon faith. Right or wrong, there are a lot of Americans, particularly evangelical Christians, who are uncomfortable with the idea of a Mormon president. The “issue” ended up consuming a lot of campaign energy.

So it would not be surprising if Huntsman was consciously distancing himself from his Mormon and Utah roots, if he could do so without alienating those voters. But is he? The Salt Lake Tribune asked that question this month, comparing him to Romney and stating that he’s not nearly as overtly Mormon:

In a 2010 interview with Fortune magazine, Huntsman, then serving as the U.S. ambassador to China, talked briefly about his personal faith, with the magazine terming his Mormon credentials “soft.”

“I can’t say I’m overly religious,” Huntsman said. “I get satisfaction from many different types of religions and philosophies.”

Huntsman is raising one of his two adopted daughters, Asha Bharati, in the Hindu faith in which she was born. Another daughter, Abby Huntsman, was wed in the Episcopal-run National Cathedral, with the service officiated by the dean of the cathedral, The Rev. SamuelT. Lloyd III.

Since then Huntsman has made a few more comments that cause concern for Mormons.

Politico explores the question of Huntsman political-religious maneuverings a lot more in this article. Check it out.

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May 22, 2011 | 1:49 pm

Indicted as Taliban financier, ‘Santa Claus imam’ gets profiled

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Miami Herald has a decent profile of one of the Florida imams indicted by federal authorities for allegedly funneling money to the Taliban. The story’s focus is the “Santa Claus iman,” aka Hafiz Muhammad Sher Ali Khan, the 76-year-old leader of a tiny mosque in Miami.

The Herald reported:

Authorities contend Hafiz Khan — was an influential figure back home who controlled the pipeline of money between Miami and the Pakistani Taliban, which used it to fund an escalating series of bombings. The group, closely affiliated with al Qaeda, was linked to an attempted car bombing last year in New York’s Times Square, and took credit for suicide bombings last week in Pakistan that killed nearly 90 people.

Before the arrests, Hafiz Khan was a relatively obscure cleric in an aging mosque in a poor neighborhood near West Miami.

(skip)

Mohammad Shakir, executive director of the Miami-Dade Asian Advisory Board, said Hafiz Khan’s sermons never strayed from traditional do’s and don’ts.

“I usually try to pay attention to any political tone in sermons,’’ said Shakir, who speaks Urdu, “In that respect, he was completely devoid of any kind of politics.’’

Not that being an obscure cleric is mutually exclusive from supporting the Taliban. I also do not intend to suggest that he is guilty as charged, but this story definitely gives the impression that the Santa Claus imam doesn’t fit the feds’ bill. Read the rest here.

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