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This article reports the results of a nationwide audit study testing how Christian churches welcome potential newcomers to their churches as a function of newcomers’ race and ethnicity. We sent email inquiries to 3,120 churches across the United States. The emails were ostensibly from someone moving to the area and looking for a new church to attend. That person’s name was randomly varied to convey different racial and ethnic associations. In response to these inquiries, representatives from mainline Protestant churches—who generally embrace liberal, egalitarian attitudes toward race relations—actually demonstrated the most discriminatory behavior. They responded most frequently to emails with white-sounding names, somewhat less frequently to black- or Hispanic-sounding names, and much less to Asian-sounding names. They also sent shorter, less welcoming responses to nonwhite names. In contrast, evangelical Protestant and Catholic churches showed little variation across treatment groups in their responses. These findings underscore the role of homophily, organizational homogeneity, and the costs of racial integration in perpetuating the racial segregation of American religious life.
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Worse, calling people names is disgraceful. Especially in the name of religion. These ad hominem attacks—an attack not on the argument but on the person–has no place in theology. It doesn’t matter if you’re attacking Pope Francis, Antonio Spadaro, Massimo Faggioli, John O’Malley, me, or anyone else. It’s completely unchristian. Feel free to disagree with us, but questioning our fidelity is out of bounds. Speaking of doctrine, one of Jesus’s lesser known teachings, and completely ignored because it’s so hard to adhere to, is his admonition against calling people names. “If you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Mt. 5:22)
Theology and Hate | James Martin, SJ. Fr. Martin then goes on to explain that the people who disagree with him are guilty of “mean-spirited invective,” “malicious slandering that passes itself off as thoughtful theology,” “mean-spirited personal attacks that pass themselves off as Christian discourse,” “hate being passed off as charity,” “ad hominem comments, thinly veiled attacks on people’s fidelity to the faith, snide insinuations and malicious twisting of words.” Did I mention “hate”? “Hate piled on hate piled on hate… And hate. An endless river of hate…. You are reading hate.“
I am gateful for this post by Fr. Martin, because it shows me so clearly what respectful disagreement unsullied by mean-spirited invective and ad hominem comments looks like. Verily, a model for us all.
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Diversity in the Christian University
Diversity in the Christian University
My friend and colleague Elizabeth Corey on Christian higher education and the problem of “diversity” — to which we need (ahem) a diversity of responses.
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34z5dCmC4M?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=250&h=141]
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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That is the moral-ideological core of conservatism today. It presumes that life is a competition or race, that people are unequal in talent, drive, and ambition, and that those who end up on top deserve their victory and rewards — and those who come out on the bottom deserve their failure and hardships. Any attempt to overturn or even mitigate this moral order — whether through government regulation or changes in habits or assumptions in school or on the playground — amounts to an offense against justice itself.
Damon Linker. If so, I’m definitely not a conservative. That looks to me like a description of a free-market libertarian, but what do I know?
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“Secular, but Feeling a Call to Divinity School,” by Samuel G. Freedman (On Religion column, Oct. 10), identifies an important trend at major seminaries throughout the country. Here at Union Theological Seminary, we see incoming classes that are a third unaffiliated, mirroring national trends.
At Union, however, we have noticed that in addition to our unaffiliated students who are agnostic or atheist, many believe in God but don’t belong to a specific religious organization. They come to ask questions about the meaning of life and to change the world.
Maybe what we see emerging is not a lack of religion but a different kind of religion. Is it perhaps a second reformation?
SERENE JONES
President
Union Theological Seminary
New York
Divinity School ‘Nones’ - The New York Times. Different in what ways? And reforming what? In the name of what? And for what purpose?
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The scientific evidence linking both processed meat and tobacco to certain types of cancer is strong. In that sense, both are carcinogens. But smoking increases your relative risk of lung cancer by 2,500 percent; eating two slices of bacon a day increases your relative risk for colorectal cancer by 18 percent. Given the frequency of colorectal cancer, that means your risk of getting colorectal cancer over your life goes from about 5 percent to 6 percent and, well, YBMMV. (Your bacon mileage may vary.) “If this is the level of risk you’re running your life on, then you don’t really have much to worry about,” says Alfred Neugut, an oncologist and cancer epidemiologist at Columbia.
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[gallery] The article is fine, but I really like this illustration by Mike McQuade
