May—June, 2013 (Vol. 28, No. 7-8)

More than 40 tombs of Muslim saints have been destroyed or attacked in Tunisia since the January 2011 revolution, a sign of growing fierce, and sometimes militant, Salafi opposition to Sufi practices of piety, writes Annette Steinich in the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (April 12).

In the only case in which culprits were arrested, the arsonists who had set fire to the tomb of a 12th century female mystic were found to be three radical Salfis. Since many of those tombs are also historical monuments, this has also led to the destruction of a valuable cultural legacy.

This is shocking to many people in Tunisia and elsewhere, especially since such practices had been accepted for centuries. The veneration of saints and respect for their tombs is not a fringe phenomenon in Islam. However, rigorist currents such as Wahhabism and now Salafism see such practices as superstitious and even blasphemous.

Educated Sufis claim, however, that people coming to pray to the tombs are actually addressing their prayers to God. Across the Muslim world Salafism has been critical of such traditional and popular piety. Such views are supported by propaganda spread from Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism is the official expression of Islam.

According to the director of the Institute of National Cultural Heritage, Adnan Louhichi, the attacks should not be seen as isolated incidents, but as part of a strategy against “moderate” forms of Islam. Anti-Sufism
thus becomes part of a wider concern about the growing activism of Salafi groups. Most of them do not support armed insurrection, although some groups are willing to engage in armed struggle: the others hope to influence society in their direction and hope to earn support through various activities, including charitable work.

According to an interview by another Swiss daily, Le Temps (May 3), with a French expert on Salafism, Romain Caillet, some members of the leading Islamic political party, Ennahda, would like to see the government take a more determined stand against Salafism, but most Ennahda members prefer to favor the unity of the Islamic field; thus the government is willing to give free rein to Salafis as long as they do not advocate violence.

In the meantime Sufis have started cooperating in an attempt to present a united front: the main Sufi brotherhoods launched a Sufi Union in late 2011. They are willing to engage in discussion with all sectors of civil society, including political parties, but do not want to directly enter the political field themselves or to associate with a specific political party: Sufi centers should not be turned into political places, according to their spokesman.

Eastern Orthodox churches are engaging in new efforts at missionary work often adopting models from Orthodox and non-Orthodox sources, according to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (April).

Missionary work in Eastern Orthodox churches has largely been confined within national or other local boundaries in which an Orthodox presence already existed or was conducted in close collaboration with the state or emperor, writes Valentin Kozhuharov.

Even after the collapse of communism, when missionary work of Western churches developed in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Orthodox churches largely did not launch any similar efforts. Even today there are no mission departments in Orthodox bodies and missiology is not taught in Orthodox seminaries, with the exception of Russia and Romania.

A number of parishes and dioceses have undertaken church initiatives, often called “diakona.” The Orthodox are more likely to see such activity as serving as a “presence” in society rather than active evangelism or involvement in people’s lives. A major exception of an Orthodox movement actively evangelizing the population is the Lord’s Army in Romania.

To develop the idea of connecting mission activity with witnessing to Christ, mission-minded Orthodox priests and laity have looked to Orthodox and non-Orthodox models of such activity. They have also participated in conferences and consultation on the missions with those from other churches. The Greek church has been organizing widespread church planting in many countries of the world, and missionary tendencies are manifesting
themselves in Balkan countries.

“Christian movements resembling mission movements have been organized in Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova,” Kozhuharov adds. The establishment of the Orthodox Mission Network in 2010, initiated by the Anglican Church Mission Society, is another example of the Eastern European Orthodox missionary movement.

Still, there are obstacles between building a strong missionary movement and Orthodoxy. For instance, many missionaries may engage in charitable work and not at first tie it into church doctrine or rituals and teachings (such as baptisms) as Orthodox tradition might dictate.

(International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 490 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511)

Small conservative Christian political parties are finding new appeal in the Netherlands among those seeking to counter Islamic influence in the country, according to Dutch political scientist Hans J.P. Vollaard.

In an article in the journal Politics and Religion (No. 6), Vollaard notes that such parties as the Christian Democratic Appeal were founded by conservative Calvinists as an attempt to fight secularism and reinsert religion into the public sphere, even trying to make common cause with Muslims. But in recent years concern about Muslims and Islamic influence in Dutch society has figured more highly in the discourse of these parties, including the highly Calvinistic Political Reformed Party, drawing more secular Dutch concerned with issues such as civil liberties.

These parties have attracted few Catholic or immigrant Christian voters (who are becoming a majority among Christians in the Netherlands), who often support secular, left-wing parties. But these parties’ stress on the Christian roots of the Netherlands has gained some traction even with secular parties. Today references to the “Judeo-Christian” roots of the nation are heard in the secular and anti-Islamic Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, even if they are framed by concerns about individual freedom, tolerance, and the separation of church and state.

Vollaard concludes that the Dutch case “illustrated how Christianity re-emerges in politics through the cultural defense mechanism, not only among Christian but also secular parties.” This trend is evident in other European countries where “the challenge of Islam also incentivized secular parties to start propagating the (Judeo)-Christian heritage of Europe and its nations.”

There are pockets of religious vitality in Ireland, but secularization continues to transform the country. In America magazine (May 20), Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin writes that it is no longer the case of a “secularized, urban Ireland and a healthy, rural Ireland.

The same cultural processes are at work across the country.” In focusing on Dublin, Martin notes that recent research based on the 2011 census figures, which were matched to parish and diocese boundaries, found that the population of the diocese was increasing but the numbers of those registering as Catholic had remained at 1.2 million.

About one-quarter of the diocese registered as something other than Catholic, well above the national average.

“It is very clear that of the three quarters who ticked the ‘Catholic box’ on the census form, many would not be practicing or even in any real contact with the church. This gives a very different demographic picture than the one at times presented or presumed.

There are already parishes in Dublin [which are referred to as defining geographical areas] where Catholics are in a minority, and it is clear that the cultural Catholicism that today still exists will not continue forever,” Martin writes.

In parish life, at least in Dublin, Martin finds that Mass attendance is highest in middle-class parishes, “where parishioners are middleclass economically and liberal middle-of-the-road on matters of church teaching.” Where there are any signs of youth participation in church life, “it is among more conservative young Catholics,” although these movements are small and make “few inroads into the lives of their peers.” The New York Times (April 3) reports that there is an “improbable revival of the Dominican order of preachers,” even as other orders close their doors.

The Dominicans are growing in other countries as well, but its resurgence—drawing far more candidates than just the 12 men studying for the parish priesthood in the whole nation—is striking, since the order, like many others, has faced child abuse accusations. The order’s revival has coincided with Ireland’s economic crisis, though officials claim that most of the potential candidates were already in prospering careers and “came to the order because of a yearning for greater spirituality.”

Doreen Carvajal writes that it is partly the monastic garb (contrasting with traditional clerical collars) and traditions, including communal lifestyles and prayer, while allowing members to work in the outside world. The Dominicans have also recruited through the Internet earlier than other orders.

Of the 500 most powerful people in the world selected by the magazine Foreign Policy (May/June), only 24 were religious leaders.

The listing compiled by the editors remains heavily populated by Americans and men; in fact, none of the religious figures was a woman. The magazine’s “power map” included several leaders of global religions organizations, including Pope Francis; Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby; Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople; the Dalai Lama; Muslim educator Fethullah Gulen; Li Hongzhi of Falun Gong, George Wood of the Assemblies of God; and Hindu leaders Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

Two megachurch leaders were included: Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in California and William Kumuyi of Deeper Christian Life Ministry in Lagos, Nigeria, which is reported to be the largest such congregation in the world, with a weekly attendance of 75,000.

There also were several leaders of religious relief organizations, such as Richard Stearns of World Vision. Most of the remaining religious leaders were considered powerful through their association with militant and, in some cases, extremist Muslim groups, including Al-Qaeda (four leaders), Hezbollah, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

(Foreign Policy, 11 Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 600, Washington, D.C. 20036)

The millennial generation is embracing “crypto-Christian artists who claim no particular affiliation and actually seem uncomfortable with institutionalized Christianity.

And yet, somehow, their imaginations, instincts and language are deeply informed by Scripture and the person of Jesus,” writes Bill McGarvey in the Jesuit magazine America (May 6). Although surveys continue to show a low rate of religious affiliation and a disenchantment with the marriage of religion and “Republican Party values” among young people, the charts are showing the popularity of musical artists who take faith — and also doubt — seriously, according to McGarvey.

He cites the UK’s Mumford & Sons’ album Babel, which was this year’s Grammy winner for Best Album and posted the best single-week sales for 2012. The album is “one of the most God-haunted collection of songs you’re likely to find by a major musical act,” featuring lyrics such as “But I’ll still believe though there’s cracks you’ll see/ When I’m on my knees I’ll still believe.”

Their music represents the “first commercial fruits of a generation of young adults raised in nondenominational Christian churches,” McGarvey writes.

Lead singer/songwriter Marcus Mumford’s parents founded the evangelical Vineyard Churches in the UK. Mumford & Sons are not alone, with the roster of crypto-Christian artists including Sufjan Stevens, Kings of Leon, and David Bazan (from Pedro the Lion).

(America, 106 W. 56th St., New York, NY 10019-3803.)

Psychedelic drugs, never really out of fashion among a segment of alternative health and spiritual practitioners, are “coming out of the drug counterculture and back into the mainstream laboratories of some of the world’s leading universities and medical centers,” according to Utne Reader (May/June). Don Lattin writes that new research programs at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Purdue University, and the University of California are probing the “mind-altering mysteries and healing powers” of substances such as ecstasy, LSD, and psilocybin. Leading the way in seeking to legitimize these drugs is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which has sought to make Ecstasy available for people suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Studies conducted with this drug have shown dramatically better results than the prescription drugs that are usually used, with few of the harmful effects that have been reported in the past. Proponents of such treatment envision that it will be administered by therapists in a controlled environment.

But another byproduct of these drugs’ growing interest and acceptance in the medical and scientific community is exploration of “consciousness,” according to Lattin. He cites a Johns Hopkins study of psilocybin for patients with anxiety about their cancer, finding that two thirds of subjects rated the sessions where they took this drug as being “among the five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives.” Butother researchers are troubled that the “new wave of psychedelic research is blurring the lines between
spiritual experience and the hard science of medicine.”

This resistance is not going unchallenged: a “new generation of psychedelic drug researchers has emerged on university campuses across the nation.” William Richards, a pioneer of psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins, acknowledged that the new interest in these drugs and their effect on spirituality may be met by a backlash of scientists “who resist the idea that scholars should seriously study something as slippery as spirituality.”

The therapy trials using psilocybin that have been conducted so far do have a religious component, even if it is an Eastern and Native American mode, according to a report in the NYU Alumni Magazine (Spring). The subjects receive their dose of the drug in a ceramic chalice in an “act nodding to indigenous cultures,” writes Jennifer Bleyer. After taking the medication they are told to “stay connected to the experience with meditation and mindfulness exercises.

Participants claim that psilocybin helped them, in one researcher’s words, experience “infinite consciousness” and often laid the foundation for other spiritual experiences.

(Utne Reader, 1503 SW 42nd St, Topeka, KS 66609;; NYU Alumni Magazine, 25 W. 4th St., 4th Fl., New York, NY 10012-1119.)

Tithing and fasting may be a factor in raising the standard of living for poor Dalit Indians, according to a study by Rebecca Shah of Georgetown University. The preliminary study, presented at the ASREC conference, studied the financial outcomes of Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and mixed-faith families of Dalits, or “untouchables”, in three slums in Bangalore, India.

Shah interviewed 300 female clients of a microfinance company and found that they engaged in different kinds of financial planning. In studying the different kinds of loans that were taken out by these clients, Shah found that those families that tithe to their churches on a weekly or monthly basis were more likely to use loans to send their children to private schools.

They were also more likely to use their loans to invest in business and in care for their children. Most of these Christians were Pentecostals who were more likely to fast than Muslims and fellow Christians. Shah noted that those who regularly tithed were not more financially well off than the others in the study; in fact, they earned less and were less educated than their Hindu and non-tithing Christian counterparts.

Shah argues that tithing and fasting are “future-oriented” practices that induce the poor to start saving their money rather than spending it on immediate gratification with the idea that “one must spend today because there will be little to spend in the future …. Seeing all of one’s money as a loan from God fosters self-restraint and limits over consumption …. Tithing means that there is hope in the future and that it is in God’s hands.”

Shah concludes that both practices exercise “voluntary self-control” that results in improved family

After years of relative quiet, rabbis working for Israel’s Ministry of Religion have reopened an old controversy by claiming that Karaites are not truly Jewish, reports The Economist (May 18).

For many centuries Karaites have lived a separate life: this ancient current of Judaism does not accept the Talmud (oral law) or rabbinical traditions, and its followers only recognize the Torah (Hebrew Bible)—thus they have sometimes been dubbed as “Protestant Jews.”

While Karaites in Egypt and other areas of the Arab world always identified themselves as Jews, communities of Karaites living in the Russian Empire in the 19th century developed an understanding of themselves as a separate, Mosaic religion, distinct from Jews (which allowed them to be spared from Nazi persecutions in Russia during the Second World War). Whatever their self-understanding, mainstream Judaism considers Karaites to be heretical.

A declining group around the world, Karaites settled in Israel (primarily immigrants from Egypt) and seem to have enjoyed some sort of revival and growth in recent years: they are reported to number around 30,000 in the country and in 2010 inaugurated a new synagogue in Ashdod. While making up less than 1 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, their presence once again raises the question of Jewish identity.

The Economist reports that rabbis working for the state have started to deem Karaite marriages to be invalid and have requested in some cases the conversion of Karaite women wanting to marry Orthodox Jews. Karaite butchers have also been fined for labeling their meat as kosher. But Israel’s Supreme Court has forced the rabbis to legitimize Karaite marriages again.

However, Karaites do not merely ask for their rights: they are also considering setting up their own institutions in reaction to rabbis who refuse to recognize them as Jews. At a recent seminar a representative of the Karaite community “asked the Israeli state to recognise his Bet Din, or religious court, so that he could license marriages and be paid a salary.” In a different way, beside the definition of Jewish identity, the predicament of the Karaites is similar to some issues faced in Israel by non-Orthodox sections of Judaism and once again raises the question of the role of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate on such issues.

The teaching on sexuality in the Orthodox Jewish community inIsrael has undergone a dramatic shift since the 1990s, writes Orit Avishai (Fordham University) in an article published in the newest issue of Fieldwork in Religion (November 2012).

While not unique to Orthodox Jews, sexual anxieties tend to be exacerbated in a community where modesty is an imperative, girls are not supposed to touch boys and the female body must be concealed. No form of premarital intimacy is allowed and sexuality is not supposed to be discussed in the community.

The wedding makes sex transform overnight from “forbidden” to “permissible.” There is a struggle in reconciling desire and pleasure with ideal images of masculinity and femininity within a community where the body tends to be erased. Obviously, this also depends of the level of exposure to secular Israeli culture.

Avishai has identified three types of strategies by bridal counselors that exist in an attempt to address these issues and facilitate a switch by reconciling carnality/desire with piety/religiosity. A traditionalist approach “sanctifies sexuality by removing it from the realm of the flesh. Marital relations are described as spiritual.

Pure thoughts should remove carnality through rituals. However, this approach does not escape a contradiction: while describing repugnance toward all things sexual as ‘Christian,’ its description of sex as a spiritual commandment associated with prayers and ‘pure thoughts’ can actually engender a negative approach of sexuality,” writes Avishai.

A pragmatic response affirms pleasure and desire while maintaining distance from secular, hedonistic views. It attempts to normalize desire and to make young women familiar with their own bodies. While space is allowed for some erotic self-exploration, sanctioned sexuality remains restricted to marital relationships.

Finally, there is a reformist approach, especially through Kolech, a feminist/progressive Orthodox women’s organization. It is primarily associated with reformist and feminist causes, and its direct impact is limited. But “modern” approaches toward sexuality are also influencing more traditionalist women, according to Avishai’s observations. The Orthodox Jewish community is “negotiating its sensibilities” in a search for answers to problems of the flesh.

Avishai suggests that major shifts are taking place and that such attempts should not be judged by progressive yardsticks, as is often done: the regulation and affirmation of sexuality can also get along with each other.

(Fieldwork in Religion , Equinox Publishing, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, South Yorskshire S3 8AF, UK).