Harvard’s intellectual culture discourages identification with Christianity

Some may find this of interest. ~ Janice

Harvard’s intellectual culture discourages identification with Christianity
The Harvard University Crimson ^ | Monday, April
17, 2006 1:34 AM | LUCY M. CALDWELL
Posted on 04/17/2006 10:37:11 AM EDT by rface
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1616428/posts
[article snipped - click link to read it]

My two replies #12 and #13 follow:

"... it is Christianity that has been pushed to
the wayside. The religion is seen as backward,
nonintellectual, and extreme." ~ LUCY M. CALDWELL

In times of need, however... (Note the date of this article below) :)

Faith does breed charity We atheists have to
accept that most believers are better human beings - by Roy Hattersley
Monday September 12, 2005 The Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1567604,00.html>http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1567604,00.html

Hurricane Katrina did not stay on the front pages
for long. Yesterday's Red Cross appeal for an
extra 40,000 volunteer workers was virtually ignored.

The disaster will return to the headlines when
one sort of newspaper reports a particularly
gruesome discovery or another finds additional
evidence of President Bush's negligence. But
month after month of unremitting suffering is not
news. Nor is the monotonous performance of the
unpleasant tasks that relieve the pain and
anguish of the old, the sick and the homeless -
the tasks in which the Salvation Army specialise.

The Salvation Army has been given a special
status as provider-in-chief of American disaster
relief. But its work is being augmented by all
sorts of other groups. Almost all of them have a
religious origin and character.

Notable by their absence are teams from
rationalist societies, free thinkers' clubs and
atheists' associations - the sort of people who
not only scoff at religion's intellectual
absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil.

The arguments against religion are well known and
persuasive. Faith schools, as they are now
called, have left sectarian scars on Northern
Ireland. Stem-cell research is forbidden because
an imaginary God - who is not enough of a
philosopher to realise that the ingenuity of a
scientist is just as natural as the instinct of
Rousseau's noble savage - condemns what he does
not understand and the churches that follow his
teaching forbid their members to pursue cures for lethal diseases.

Yet men and women who believe that the Pope is
the devil incarnate, or (conversely) regard his
ex cathedra pronouncements as holy writ, are the
people most likely to take the risks and make the
sacrifices involved in helping others. Last week
a middle-ranking officer of the Salvation Army,
who gave up a well-paid job to devote his life to
the poor, attempted to convince me that homosexuality is a mortal sin.

Late at night, on the streets of one of our great
cities, that man offers friendship as well as
help to the most degraded and (to those of a
censorious turn of mind) degenerate human beings
who exist just outside the boundaries of our
society. And he does what he believes to be his
Christian duty without the slightest suggestion
of disapproval. Yet, for much of his time, he is
meeting needs that result from conduct he regards as intrinsically wicked.

Civilised people do not believe that drug
addiction and male prostitution offend against
divine ordinance. But those who do are the men
and women most willing to change the fetid
bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and -
probably most difficult of all - argue, without a
trace of impatience, that the time has come for
some serious medical treatment. Good works, John
Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in
heaven. But they are most likely to be performed
by people who believe that heaven exists.

The correlation is so clear that it is impossible
to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand.
The close relationship may have something to do
with the belief that we are all God's children,
or it may be the result of a primitive conviction
that, although helping others is no guarantee of
salvation, it is prudent to be recorded in a book
of gold, like James Leigh Hunt's Abu Ben Adam, as
"one who loves his fellow men". Whatever the
reason, believers answer the call, and not just
the Salvation Army. When I was a local
councillor, the Little Sisters of the Poor -
right at the other end of the theological
spectrum - did the weekly washing for women in
back-to-back houses who were too ill to scrub for themselves.

It ought to be possible to live a Christian life
without being a Christian or, better still, to
take Christianity à la carte. The Bible is so
full of contradictions that we can accept or
reject its moral advice according to taste. Yet
men and women who, like me, cannot accept the
mysteries and the miracles do not go out with the Salvation Army at night.

The only possible conclusion is that faith comes
with a packet of moral imperatives that, while
they do not condition the attitude of all
believers, influence enough of them to make them
morally superior to atheists like me. The truth
may make us free. But it has not made us as
admirable as the average captain in the Salvation Army.

· <mailto:comment@guardian.co.uk>comment@guardian.co.uk

12 posted on 04/17/2006 12:23:59 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1616428/posts?page=12#12

Marvin O'Lasky comments on Roy Hattersley's article in the Guardian:

Unheralded Persons of the Year --- Dec 22, 2005 --- by Marvin Olasky

Time did well in selecting Bono plus Bill and
Melinda Gates as its charitable Persons of the
Year, but I wish it had also put a non-celebrity
-- maybe a volunteer Katrina relief worker -- on its cover.

It would have been good to honor one of the 9,000
Southern Baptists from 41 states who volunteered
120,000 days during the two months after the
hurricane hit. During that time, they served 10
million meals and pushed forward cleanup and recovery efforts.

Or how about someone from the Salvation Army:
Those folks served nearly 5 million hot meals and
over 6.5 million sandwiches, snacks and drinks
from 178 mobile feeding units and 11 field
kitchens, with each kitchen able to produce 20,000 hot meals per day.

Big numbers, and those were just two of the
active groups. Many others also delivered food
and supplies in a much more flexible style than
the bureaucratic FEMA. Ronnie Harris, mayor of
the New Orleans suburb of Gretna, flat-out said:
"Church workers were the first volunteers on the
ground. It is churches that have made the
difference in Hurricane Katrina recovery."

Many others concur, but some Christians worry
that such church activity is the "social gospel"
revisited, at the expense of evangelism. There's
reason for concern, because we are all prone to
wander spiritually and to focus on what the world
praises than on what it misunderstands or even
abhors. And yet, evangelism is often most
successful, in God's timing, when those hostile
to Christ look up in surprise at what Christians are doing.

For example, after Katrina, an atheist asked in
the British left-wing Guardian Weekly why
Christians "are the people most likely to take
the risks and make the sacrifices involved in
helping others." You can almost see the synapses
sparking in the writer's brain: "It ought to be
possible to live a Christian life without being a
Christian or, better still, to take Christianity
a la carte. Yet ... it is impossible to doubt
that faith and charity go hand in hand."

He's right, and add evangelism to the mix: Faith
leads to works, and works lead people to ask
questions about faith. As the works of the
faithful diminish the pride of the faithless --
the British writer concluded that Christians are
"morally superior to atheists like me" --
Christian charity ploughs the ground for an
evangelistic response: no, not morally superior, just touched by One who was.

Even hardcore U.S. anti-Christian publications
couldn't help noticing the difference Christian
belief made during the post-Katrina days. The New
York Times story described how church groups were
doing better than government agencies, and didn't
even object (this one time) when those who
"finish clearing debris or doing temporary
repairs on damaged houses ... give the homeowners
a signed Bible and say a prayer with them."

On Christmas, we might remember how a long time
ago another nation faced a disaster even greater
than Katrina. Enemy soldiers occupied the land
and imposed toady officials on a resentful
populace. It seemed that God had been quiet for
centuries, and some said He would never speak
again. Then the ultimate act of Christian charity
transformed every aspect of life. That deed began
the transformation of everything around us.

God is always transforming old into new: hearts
of stone to hearts of flesh, the former sites of
abortion businesses into pro-life counseling
centers, maybe even the disaster of Katrina into
something positive for those who have broken away
from poverty and despair in New Orleans and found new opportunities elsewhere.

Effective evangelism conveys that good news,
starting with Christ's birth and the way that
millions of people gain rebirth through God's
grace. Evangelism is particularly effective when
it combines words and deeds, as it did when the
herald angels sang 2,000 years ago, and as it did
once again when the unheralded deliverers of
post-Katrina compassion sacrificed for others.

<http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marvinolasky/2005/12/22/180065.html>http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/marvinolasky/2005/12/22/180065.html

13 posted on 04/17/2006 12:30:03 PM EDT by Matchett-PI
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1616428/posts?page=13#13
Received on Mon Apr 17 12:42:54 2006