January, 2001 (Vol. 16, No. 3)

Turkey’s Whirling Dervishes, Muslims practicing mystical dances, are experiencing the same divisions existing between moderate and militant Islam throughout the world, particularly over the role of women.

The Washington Post (Dec. 25) reports that the dervishes, known for their whirling, trance-like dances which are seen as a way of communicating with God, have traditionally been for men only. But the formation of the Istanbul Foundation of Universal Lovers of Mevlana several years ago is causing controversy among the other dervishes and in Islamic Sufisim (the mystical branch of Islam) for accepting women dervishes.

When the women shed the traditional white robes for multi-hued garments, the foundation caused further waves among traditionalists. But writer Molly Moore notes that there are only seven surviving Whirling Dervishes in Turkey, some with just over two dozen active members and with few younger leaders to “step into the robes of aging leaders.” But the Modern Lovers of Mevlana have managed to attract dozens of new members; there are now more women than men members as of last year.

Even the most conservative dervish orders have modernized membership requirements in recent years. All organizations have abandoned the practice of requiring prospective whirlers to prove their abilities by making 1,001 rotations in bare feet atop a nail on a salt-covered floor.

A “radical” youth-oriented church movement in Europe is growing by using high tech entertainment-oriented services, reports Charisma magazine (January).

Membership at Zurich’s International Christian Fellowship (ICF) has grown sharply in the past four years, as it has branched out to  seven other congregations in other parts of Switzerland, and neighboring Germany. The church’s services — which are called “events” — avoid outwardly charismatic behavior such as worshipping with raised hands, speaking in tongues and altar calls, and the style is targeted strictly to the unchurched, according to senior pastor Leo Bigger, a former printer who started ICF with 100 people.

Newcomers find high-energy presentations featuring live music, video clips, drama, smoke and light, and dancing. Six separate events at the church — which meets in a nightclub near the city’s business center — cater specifically to different age groups.

The pastor visited Las Vegas to learn more about “the latest in showbiz,” and believes that church services should not have “quality way below the world’s standards.” Bigger calls his churches a  “a tougher version of Willow Creek [the suburban Chicago church pioneering the “seeker sensitive” approach] . . . You do not reach the Swiss by softness.” New converts are invited to join “workshops” — home-fellowship groups — for prayer, Bible study, and worship, and these “cells” form the actual church.

The magazine reports that young people in Ukraine also favor progressive over more traditional church styles. Over the last 18 months attendance at a series of Vybkuh-“explosion”-concerts in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev has grown from 100 to 2,000. The events are put on by the Hillsong Church started by missionaries from the network of Hillsong churches in Australia. The lively outreach is setting a new pattern in a country where the churches are historically conservative, sometimes barring young visitors with  jeans, make-up and earrings.

(Charisma, 600 Rinehart Rd., Lake Mary, FL 32746)

Many churches are forming new radio ministries through the growth of new low power FM stations.

Charisma News Service (Dec. 28) reports that about half of the first 255 new low-power FM (LPFM) licenses offered by the U.S. government’s broadcast licensing body have gone to churches and ministries. Operating at between 50 and 100 watts, the new stations will have a broadcast radius of just a few miles, operating on a shoestring budget and relying on volunteers.

The new licenses are being issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as part of an effort to enrich local communities with diverse programming. The 255 applicants eligible for licenses were chosen from 1,200 candidates, who also included educational and community groups.

The initiative was strongly opposed by commercial broadcasters, who say the  small stations can interfere with their frequencies.

The Way International (TWI), a movement that gained many followers and notoriety in the 1970s, appears to be on an accelerated course of decline after sexual scandals involving leaders and law suits against the organization have recently been revealed.

The Christian Research Journal (Volume 23, Number 1), an evangelical countercult publication, reports that The Way, a group based around its study courses teaching  non-Trinitarian Christianity, has been in a free fall since its founder Victor Paul Wierwille died in 1985. Rev. Craig Martindale, who succeeded Wierwille, revamped the group, substituting his own terminology and courses and establishing himself as a “the Man of God for our Day.”

But the recent revelation that Martindale was involved in a sexual affair and his abrupt resignation from TWI has hurt a group already weakened by many schisms. The admission plus a lawsuit (one of many by former members) filed last spring charging that the TWI kept members psychologically dependent on leaders has led regional coordinators to resign. Current statistics put TWI supporters (there was not an official membership) at 5,000, though at its peak, the group was said to have  50,000-100,000 course graduates and supporters.

(Christian Research Journal, P.O. Box 7000, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688-7000)

Kwanzaa, the cultural and spiritual holiday for African-Americans, is being commercialized and is facing criticism by purists, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News (Dec. 27).

American blacks spend as much as $700 million on Kwanzaa-related merchandise. Such mainstream retailers as Target, Pier 1, and Borders Books are competing with stores catering specifically to blacks for Kwanza gifts and other merchandise, reports Charlee Oldham. The 34-year-old festival is celebrated by about 10 percent of African-Americans and is built around seven principles, which include spirituality, unity, self-determination and creativity.

But it is the principle of cooperative economics, which encourages blacks to build and maintain their own business, that has caused purists to attack the new commercialization as diluting the holiday. Others, however, say they’re happy Kwanzaa is finding its way into the mainstream. Black critics are also unhappy that Kwanzaa is increasingly being celebrated as a multicultural holiday, since many people can relate to the seven principles.

American Muslims are increasingly influencing their fellow believers in other parts of the world, reports the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 29).

Although American Muslims are a small fraction of the one billion Muslims worldwide, they are wielding significant influence in business practices and economic development in their homelands “through a mushrooming number of non-profit organizations,” writes Teresa Watanabe. Aslam Abdullah of the Los Angeles-based Minaret magazine says that more than 300 such groups now raise about $50 million a year for such causes as education and health care.

Though Muslims in the U.S. see their situation as divided and lacking political clout, they are viewed with high expectationS by Muslims in other countries due to their education and high professional standing. Until now, the model for Muslims for modernization has been Turkey, which has excised Islam from the public square.  With its pluralism that can permit a high level of observance, the U.S. is becoming the new model, says Sulayman Nyang of Howard University.

Through such ventures as the Iqra International Educational Foundation in Chicago, American Muslims are exporting books on Islam to other countries. Professors like Khaled Abou el Fadl of UCLA are producing scholarship that blends an Islamic critique of social issues with an appreciation for academic freedom. He has published critiques of Islamic divorce laws, abuses such as wife-beating, and even anti-apostasy teachings that are being noticed, if also criticized, abroad.

Conservative Christians are banding together and intensifying their activism in the global arena, particularly on family issues in the United Nations, reports the current issue of The Public Eye (Summer/Fall), a leftist newsletter monitoring the religious right.

“Frustrated with political defeats at the national level, the Christian Right is turning to the developing world as an innocent, unspoiled frontier, which might possibly be rescued from a morally bankrupt West,” writes Jennifer Butler. While pursuing the prolife agenda in the UN and other international arenas (even joining with Muslim groups) has been a staple of Vatican activism under Pope John Paul II, the newsletter notes that evangelicals, Mormons, and other believers are now also involved in such efforts.

Turning back pro-choice and feminist initiatives at UN conferences and agencies became a priority among conservative believers after the 1995 Beijing Conference, where “progressive feminist activism’ reached its zenith, writes Butler. Leading the new interfaith effort is the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (affiliated with the Catholic prolife group Human Life International), the Brigham Young University-based World Family Policy Center (WFPC), the Howard Center, the Mormon-based United Families International, and, to some extent, Focus on the Family. .

The WFPC and the Howard Center have sponsored World Congress of the Family meetings where Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others have strategized and targeted UN measures they see as undermining the traditional family. Conservative strategists seeking to block such measures are encouraging other conservative NGOs to apply for consultative status in order to observe certain UN proceedings. Though there has been progress at building an interfaith  “conservative bloc,” new divisions have also resulted, as when most Latin American nations deserted a coalition crafted by the Vatican at the follow up meeting to the Beijing conference last June.

In the conservative ecumenical magazine Touchstone (November), Allan Carlson of the Howard Center writes that the Christian Democratic parties’ influence had made the UN strongly supportive of the traditional family in the 1940s. He adds “To succeed this time, though, such an intellectual construct must appeal to more than Western Christians, who no longer dominate the UN or the world; it must build on the idea of a common human nature; and it must embrace all religiously grounded family morality systems around the globe . . . I believe . . . that projects such as the World Congress of Families are taking steps toward encouraging and shaping such a vision.”

(The Public Eye, 1310 Broadway, Suite 201, Somerville, MA 02144; Touchstone, P.O. Box 410788, Chicago, IL 60641)

The year 2000 was not what it was prophesized to be.

The Y2K crisis turned out to be a dud. Millennial and apocalyptic visions were few and far between. The most tangible millennial religious celebration was the Vatican’s Jubilee Year. While its many events may have repercussions in the years ahead — especially the massive youth meeting in Rome — they did not seem to engage the broad, ecumenical Christian participation for which the pope had hoped. But there were other news events that signaled broader trends that are likely to last beyond 2001. As in previous years, we cite the issue of RW where these trends are given fuller treatment after each entry.

01: The General Conference of the United Methodist Church last May showed that a liberal, mainline denomination can swing back in more conservative directions. The measures passed at the conference prohibited homosexual unions from taking place in congregations, firmed up of doctrine on Christ as savior of the world, and condemned partial birth abortion, representing a shift of voting power of delegates in the denomination from the northern liberal, social activist branch to the Southern evangelical wing of the church.

It is another matter whether the conservative influence will be reflected in the church’s national offices and bishops, and whether such a transition can be made without generating extensive division and resistance from liberals, which is already emerging.

(See September, November RW)

02: The main organization of mainline Protestants, the National Council of Churches,  made overtures to evangelicals and Catholics in 2000, realizing that an infusion of new blood was needed for the moribund and financially struggling organization — an idea that evangelicals (as found in the National Association of Evangelicals) avidly supported.

Robert Edgar, head of the NCC, even signed a joint statement with evangelicals and Catholics last fall calling for support of the family and marriage. But Edgar soon reversed his support for the statement, largely under pressure by mainline leaders who said it could be viewed as gay bashing (as it defined marriage as the union of a man and woman). The incident suggests that building a broader organization for mainline and conservative Christians will be slow and difficult. [December ‘99].

03: The November elections were often viewed through the prism of  a wide cultural divide, as analysts pointed to the map showing George W. Bush winning the votes from the South and the heartland, and Al Gore with the strongest support from the East and West coasts.

Post-election surveys did show conservative believers continuing to move toward the Republican Party. Just as significant, however, was the larger than usual Catholic vote (though far from a landslide) for a Republican candidate, suggesting that active Catholics may be trekking away from the Democrats just as their conservative Protestant counterparts did twenty years ago. [RW will have more on this topic in the February issue.]

There was also the emergence of a Muslim voter bloc that took its cues from U.S. Islamic organizations endorsing Bush. The nomination of Joseph Lieberman and his general acceptance by a majority of Americans was interpreted as the political coming of age of American Jewry, particularly because Lieberman’s observant Orthodox faith was a far cry from more assimilated, secular approach of other Jewish politicians.

(December, 2000)

While the movement linking spirituality and health has drawn generous media coverage, philanthropic funding, and impressive research results, the health care system has yet to recognize the “faith factor” in its everyday workings.

“We have to get this stuff paid for,” said Dr. Herbert Benson, pioneer of the spirituality in medicine field, referring to the lack of health insurers covering the new approach to health. Benson was speaking at the conference on spirituality and healing he runs every December in Boston, sponsored by the Harvard Medical School and his own Mind/Body Medical Institute. The conference itself, called “Mainstreaming Spirituality: The Next Step,” showed how far the field of spirituality in medicine has progressed.

When Religion Watch covered one of Benson’s earliest conferences,  the idea of prayer and faith used in medical treatment was relatively novel, mainly confined to holistic and Eastern spirituality circles.

Throughout the 1990s, Benson and his colleagues — with substantial funding from the John Templeton Foundation — sought to buttress their claims with verifiable scientific data, such as in proving the effect of meditation and prayer on the treatment of such ailments as heart disease and arthritis. The effort to introduce courses on spirituality and health in medical schools has been successful.

The annual conferences also showed a concern to expand and translate the concept of healing for mainstream religious traditions — from Pentecostalism to Islam. Speakers at this year’s conference did acknowledge a degree of acceptance in the medical establishment. In one session, Phyllis Ann Solari-Twadell reported that parish nurses — nurses working with church members on health issues — have piloted a program to expand the nursing vocabulary to include such concepts as spiritual well-being and spiritual crises in their diagnoses and interventions.

But the central theme of the conference was that until health insurance companies pay for spiritual care in their coverage, the faith factor in medicine will not gain legitimacy in the health care system. Such major health insurance companies as Cigna and Aetna have refused to provide reimbursements for treatments involving spirituality and faith, as well as unconventional “mind-body” practices.

The cost-driven nature of health insurance that favors conventional and hi-tech treatments over controversial  techniques, and the fact that the industry does not communicate well enough with consumers to know of their interests in such treatments all contribute to the marginalization of spirituality in medicine, according to Tom Wojick of the Mind-Body Institute of St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Va.

Benson said that his institute and others in the field are concentrating on changing the minds of the large purchasers of insurance — the companies that have the leverage to demand reimbursements for treatments when they buy coverage plans for their employees.

One of the few insurers to offer benefits for spiritual care is Sloans Lake Managed Care, a firm headed by speaker Neil Waldron. The company covers the services provided by chaplains, pastoral counselors and spiritual directors from all religious faiths. A recent company survey of those who have used Sloans Lake coverage found that females are the most likely recipients; that the cost of such coverage is very low (about $300 per year); that spiritual counseling to address specific needs is the form of spiritual care most often used (87 percent); the majority of users were satisfied with such care; and that physicians very rarely, if ever, referred patients for spiritual care.