Birchat HaChammah - Locating the Sun on Its Day of Creation

Jews like Rabbi Bleich believe that the sun next Wednesday occupies the same location in the firmament as it did when it was formed on the fourth day of Creation, which would have been Wednesday, March 26, of the Hebrew year 1, otherwise known as 3760 B.C.

From the New York Times:

Aristarchus's 3rd century BC calculations on the relative sizes of the Earth, Sun and Moon, from a 10th century CE Greek copy. Image via Wikipedia

According to the celestial calculations of a Talmudic sage named Shmuel, at the outset of spring every 28 years, the sun moves into the same place in the sky at the same time and on the same day of the week as it did when God made it. This charged moment provides the occasion for reciting a one-line blessing of God, “who makes the work of creation.”

Self-effacing humor aside, Rabbi Bleich has inadvertently caught a cultural wave. A man who proudly eschews the computer, relies on his secretary to print out e-mail for him, and still owns and uses a rotary phone, he has seen Birchat HaChammah catch on more widely among American Jews than ever in his memory.

Rabbi Bleich draws on a range of Judaic liturgy, commentary and legal codes, as well as the mathematical fine points of the solar, lunar, Julian and Gregorian calendars, to parse the purpose of Birchat HaChammah.The same brief prayer — consisting of the basic syntactical root for most blessings and three culminating, specific Hebrew words — is also used to express awe and wonder at physical grandeur (the Grand Canyon) and creative acts visible as they happen (lightning, meteor showers).

Image via Wikipedia

The Reform and Conservative movements, along with the Orthodox, have put increased attention on the blessing this year. It has, for many liberal Jews, become interwoven with environmental activism. Birchat HaChammah also appeals to followers of and dabblers in Jewish mysticism.

As the historian Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University pointed out in a recent interview, taking part in Birchat HaChammah asks relatively little from a not-so-religious Jew.

“Frequent rituals, like saying kaddish every day, are difficult to maintain, and without strenuous effort they cease to be meaningful,” Mr. Sarna said.

“Infrequent rituals — those performed annually or once in a life cycle, like a bar mitzvah, or in this case once in 28 years — are by definition more exotic and it is easy to draw meaning out of them,” he said. “In all religions, the infrequent rituals are more widely observed and tend to be more beloved than the frequent ones.”

Turban Week in Texas

In Texas, students agree to wear bright colored turbans - as long as they don't drink or smoke while it's on. Almost everyone who wears a turban in the United States is Sikh, and Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world.

As an exercise in religious tolerance, Texas college students were urged to wear blood-red, neon orange, or aquamarine cloth around the heads, symbols of Sikh religion.

Billed as "Sikh Turban Week," Sikh students at colleges including University of Texas at Arlington and Southern Methodist University tied turbans and debunked myths for their classmates during spring break.

Jaipreet Singh Suri, president of Southern Methodist University's Sikh Student Association, decided to host a "turban day" at SMU because of continuing questions and accusations surrounding his turban. He offerred $10 gift cards for Subway, Starbucks, and Chipotle to the first 100 students to wear the turban for three hours and tell others why they were doing so. The participants signed a paper that said they wouldn't smoke, drink alcohol or take off the turban during their assigned time.

Students continued to sign up long after the gift cards were gone. After 170 turbans were tied by himself and volunteers, he had to send people away. They'd run out of cloth.

Rajinder Singh, a software engineer from Allen who teaches Sikh history at the Richardson gurdwara, said, "If you are asked to strip, it's the same as asking me to take off my turban," he said. "It's a form of identity" and a reminder of faith. Even in India, Sikhs have long been persecuted.

Almost everyone who wears a turban in the United States is Sikh.

Sikh symbols of faith. Image via Wikipedia

Sikhism, whose origins date back only to the 15th century, draws on aspects of Hinduism and Islam but is a separate religion. Guru Nanak, the first of 10 Gurus, or holy teachers, pushed the faith's principles of egalitarianism, community service and moral purity. Along with the turban, the religion has five other tangible symbols of faith: uncut hair and beard, a wooden comb worn in the hair, an iron bracelet, a small ceremonial sword and a special type of underwear.

The most distinguishable article of faith – the turban – ends up conjuring notions of Islamic fundamentalism for many Americans, who have difficulty distinguishing the range of cultures from Egypt to India, said Robert Hunt, the director of global theological education at SMU.

About 5,000 Sikhs live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and most Sikhs come from the Punjab region in northwest India. Overall, about a half-million Sikhs live in the United States, with the largest population in California.

Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world and has at least 24 million followers worldwide.

Profound Religious Shifts in America (With Pictures)

Quick post: USA Today provides a concise report of a large and important survey of American religion. Interactive graphics and charts add much to this insightful article.

We all know religion is changing, now we have the pictures to prove it.

Image via Wikipedia

An article in USA Today features key findings from the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) released today. It is based on 113,000 interviews, updated with 50,000 more in 2001 and now 54,000 in 2008. Because the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, the ARIS survey was the first comprehensive study of how people identify their spiritual expression.

Major takeaway? Nearly all religious denominations have lost ground - often dramatic percentages - since 1990. The religious "Nones" (those indicating no particular religious affiliation) has grown.

From the article:

Image via Wikipedia

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, "the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion," the report concludes.

• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or "born again," was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups' populations.

The USA Today article includes some nice charts and graphs.  Also, the full report is online.

ELCA Ordains Gay Pastors - But Only Churches Hire Them

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will allow the ordination of gay pastors, but leaves individual congregations and synods discretion on ordaining or, more importantly, hiring them.

Image via Wikipedia

The issue of homosexuality (and the host of LGBTQQi issues swirling around American Christianity) continues to strain the decision-making processes of denominational bodies across the United States. Some are solving it in some fashion or other, but others are waiting and waiting, hoping that some bold solution to the issue will present itself.

Yet no easy solution is being found for positions that simply fail to recognize any form of homosexuality as legitimate. The ELCA now offers a type of compromise solution. The denomination ordains gays, but ultimately it is up to churches to hire them.

As an outsider to the ELCA, this strikes me as an interesting position. This is a move that may protect the reputation of the denomination ("Hey, we ordain gays!") and stave off controversy from the standpoint of denominational headquarters (who can publish official positions on the matter), but it certainly leaves the issue unresolved.

The burden of actually figuring out an approach to gay pastors will be done on a church by church (or synod by synod) basis. This not only heightens the salience of local churches but also has vast implications for the issue -- and the decision will be watched closely by other "conservative" denominations.

Overall, this position is essentially a conservative solution. The denomination is throwing up its hands in the face of what are undoubtedly several progressive leaders in the body and their many compelling arguements for gay ordination.

But it is a conservative position in that most congregations will likely continue the path of barring both the ordination and employment of gay pastors.

Image via Wikipedia

On the other hand, the "open" denominational position does leave the possibility of new ELCA congregations being formed by gay pastors. I would guess that as ELCA seminaries graduate more openly gay ministers -- and perhaps some seminaries will become havens for such ministers -- they will seek to establish new ministries where the issue is solved at the outset by their very presence.

The history of homosexuality in the modern church is still being written. How important are ELCA's actions? Or will they only be seen as a side-step to another, larger development? Finally, as church-planting efforts continue, are there new, gay-affirming, "strip mall" ELCA churches coming to a neighborhood near you?

BBC Podcast Explores Online Faith

BBC explores online religion with a diversity of voices.


The BBC has a long commitment to exploring the full range of religion in the modern world, and this podcast explores the play of tradition and innovation by looking at religion and the internet.

Dr Robert Beckford talks to a podcasting priest, a blogging rabbi and a Mulsim imam whether on-line religion is replacing traditional practices.

He also talks to Mogg Morgan, a practising pagan, about how the internet has strengthened the worldwide pagan community.

The broadcast is available for about a week on BBC Radio 4 website.

Pre-Packaged Suburban Life - For Whites Only

If you've never heard of Levittown, here's your chance. This mid-20th Century urban development made home buyers sign a statement saying they would 'not permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.'

A new book on racial relations and urban development is now out.

Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb


New manufacturing techniques, the demand for homes post-WWII, and new financing schemes (with the surge of kids which we now call "The Baby Boom") coalesced in the creation of planned communities.

Levittown (in both New York and Pennsylvania) produced so many homes that by 1952 the Levitt brothers who created these communities were building one 1 of every 8 homes in America.

In a review of the book, The Wall Street Journal writes,

With the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president still fresh in our memories, it is easy to forget that not that long ago hard-wired racism underpinned communities all over America -- not just in the states of the old Confederacy -- and that acquiring a home was, for black families, a process often fraught with humiliation and danger.

These urban villages were to

start as complete communities, themselves prefabricated, so to speak, with shopping centers, churches, pools, parks, curved streets for a rural feel and cul-de-sacs where children could play safely. The Levittown customer, declared Bill Levitt, was "not just buying a house, he's buying a way of life."

Do you wish you had more insight on the persistent racial disparities in the United States? Learn more about the discriminatory practices of housing and lending that existed for much of the past century (with remnants still continuing today). The cascade of subsequent effects on jobs, education, and health are profound.

Here's a well-written, well-researched book that highlights this too-often-ignored aspect of urban America.

Missionary Jews

A new book looks at how mid-20th Century Jews sought to present themselves in ways that generated understanding and support.

I have a general interest in any form of "missionary" activity, and here's a new book looks at a form of missional activity in the conscious self-presentation of Jews in America in the past century.

Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity


From the Introduction (available online):

Over the course of Jewish history, Jews often thought of themselves as living among strangers. Through stories, rituals, laws, and folkways, Jews sought to understand their relationship to non-Jews. In the modern era, in a more sustained fashion than any other historical period, explaining—or presenting—Jewishness to non-Jews became a political necessity and an act of Jewish survival.

For some Jews, the task bred ideological fervor, a sense that Jewishness was enacted only when Jews were busy addressing themselves to the non-Jewish world. Even for those who were not so fervid, few Jews could navigate modernity without considering how to talk about being Jewish to non-Jews.

This book is about some of the ways in which American Jews explained themselves to non-Jews and how the meaning of Jewishness became inseparable from their explanations.

In the United States, Jewish leaders—rabbis and intellectuals—sought to generate a public language of Jewishness, one that carried authority and was disseminated into an American public sphere. Speaking of Jews is a history of how these leaders talked about Jewishness in public from immediately after World War I through the civil rights era.

Image via Wikipedia

As the most widely recognized spokespeople of American Jews, countless rabbis devoted themselves to creating an American language of Jewishness. Taking to the roads, the airwaves, the printing presses, university classrooms, and pulpits across the country, rabbis engaged in the central and as yet unexamined project of presenting Jewishness to the United States. Their task, as they saw it, was as much about defining a collective identity as it was about crafting an ideology about the relationship between Jews and non-Jews and the role that Jews could play in a non-Jewish society. At different times and in different contexts, rabbis claimed that Jews' religious ideals, their history, or their distinctive behaviors allowed the United States to forge ahead with its democratic experiment. When properly conceived, a public language of Jewishness, instead of marking Jews as outside of or peripheral to American life, enabled Jewish leaders to define Jews as indispensable to the United States.

The book combines questions of history and identity among an important religious-ethnic group in the face of questions of diversity and legitimacy in the United States. My impression? Informative and fascinating.

You can find more on Speaking of Jews at the University of California Press website.

Yes, Native Americans Shaped European Colony's Religion and Culture

John Fea posted a quick blurb on the Religion in American History blog to highlight an excellent book on early American religion.

Encounters of the Spirit: Native Americans and European Colonial Religion

It seems that Native Americans influenced the early colonists in interesting ways. Here's the publisher's description:

Historians have long been aware that the encounter with Europeans affected all aspects of Native American life. But were Indians the only ones changed by these cross-cultural meetings? Might the newcomers' ways, including their religious beliefs and practices, have also been altered amid their myriad contacts with native peoples?

In Encounters of the Spirit, Richard W. Pointer takes up these intriguing questions in an innovative study of the religious encounter between Indians and Euro-Americans in early America. Exploring a series of episodes across the three centuries of the colonial era and stretching from New Spain to New France and the English settlements, he finds that the flow of cultural influence was more often reciprocal than unidirectional.

Carefully written, historically saturated books like this are always worth checking out. Thanks to Professor Fea, author of


The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America

for pointing out this book. John Fea also keeps up his own blog.

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Bloggingheads: Christian Schism in the Episcopal Church - The New York Times - Video Library

Theology? Or culture war?

A brief dialogue from Christopher Wells, left, of the Living Church Foundation and Father William Franklin of the American Academy in Rome debate the schism in the Episcopal Church.

Playing Gods - The Game of Divine Domination

Playing Gods : The Board Game of Divine Domination

I love board games and came across this new game. In a news article, Carl Raschke, professor of religious studies at University of Denver says, "The game's perspective "has no basis in historical reality and doesn't actually represent any religion. It just appeals to people who hate religion to begin with — the hip subculture of militant popular atheists."

Raschke adds, "These people are fanatics, for the most part, themselves. Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don't use their minds or study what they are dealing with. They start from their own dogmatic perspective."

New Book on Tolerance and Religion from Yale University Press

All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World

From a review of All Can Be Saved by Stuart B. Schwartz (Yale Univ. Press, 2008, 336 pp., $40):

"Stuart Schwartz argues eloquently and convincingly in All Can Be Saved that the kind of plurality we now take for granted also existed in the distant past, albeit more cautiously hidden. Disbelief, indifference, and unbelief have always been an option, he affirms, and so has tolerance, which he distinguishes from toleration. According to Schwartz, tolerance—the acceptance of a live-and-let-live attitude toward those who believe differently from oneself—was practiced in Spain and elsewhere long before actual toleration became a business necessity or a legal reality. The steep and tortuous road to state-supported religious toleration, then, was not built so much by freethinking theoreticians such as Locke, Hume, and Voltaire, whose role was akin to cartographers and engineers, but by thousands upon thousands of ordinary men and women, and a few extraordinary ones, who simply refused to accept all of the theological and ethical norms that their church and state handed to them willy-nilly at baptism, or nolens volens, as the elites of that day would have said."

The full review is here.

Religion Trading Card Game - Just Print and Cut

Religion card. Print and Play.

Insulting? Yes. But, this is a fun way to look at modern religious diversity.

For all cards, click here.