CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

The first time I taught an introductory world religions class, one of the students was a quiet Afghan named Mohammed. When it came time for oral presentations, Mohammed talked about Jesus. As a devout Muslim, he knew a lot about his subject.

This was a few years before 9/11 — before ”Islamic extremism” and “jihad” entered the cultural lexicon; before conservative media began regularly exploiting their audiences’ ignorance of orthodox Islam; before suspicion of all things Muslim became the order of the day in America.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

Last month, an encounter between Michelle Obama and a Latina child in a suburban Maryland school brought into sharp relief one of the most pressing issues surrounding U.S. immigration policy: the effect that the current broken system is having–and has had for a long time–on the young children of immigrants.

The second-grade girl seemed to want confirmation–or perhaps it was refutation–of something she’d heard her mother say: “Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn’t have papers.” In typical miss-the-main-point fashion, the media focused more on the First Lady’s response (she handled the awkward situation admirably) than on the heartbreaking reality exposed by this little girl’s question.

For several months I helped teach Sunday School and provide child care in a small Latino congregation in North Carolina.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

When I explain Calvinism to college students they make it clear they want nothing to do with it. Of course, I teach at a Methodist school but that doesn’t really account for their en masse aversion. (Turns out most Methodist undergraduates don’t know enough about their own ecclesial history to argue for or against, say, predestination. Plus, the class has plenty of Catholics, Lutherans, even Presbyterians who also find John Calvin deeply disagreeable).

This persists even when I tell them that predestination is hardly the centerpiece of Calvin’s theological enterprise; that divine freedom and sovereignty (not castigating judgment) frame Calvin’s outlook and agenda; that TULIP is a later, mostly unhelpful, invention; that it might even be possible to interpret Calvin, as Marilynne Robinson has persuasively done, as an aesthete.

Doesn’t matter.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

Last Thursday, a U.S. District Court judge in Madison, Wisconsin ruled that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. On Friday, Christopher Hitchens and Tony Perkins duked it out on CNN, rehearsing familiar arguments:

Hitchens: Court decision good. ”The first amendment is written with admirable clarity that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’”

Perkins: Court decision bad. (He’s calling for the judge’s impeachment). “The National Day of Prayer goes all the way back to the founding fathers.”

Despite some hysterical emails, blogs, and Facebook status updates, President Obama still plans to acknowledge this year’s National Day of Prayer on May 6. (It seems there isn’t any issue which the President’s detractors won’t confuse or distort in order to demonize him).

Many Christians are outraged at Judge Barbara Crabb’s ruling. Tony Perkins and his organization, The Family Research Council, speak for a large segment of American church-goers who see Thursday’s decision as deliberate “judicial activism,” intent on leading the United States further down the path toward “godless socialism.”

But here, I submit, are five reasons why the National Day of Prayer, from a Christian perspective, has always been a bad idea... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

It started, as these things often do, on Facebook.

“Show your solidarity with WV coal miners,” urged several friends via their status updates. By early Monday evening you could do this by joining various Facebook groups: “Pray for the Miners in Raleigh Co. WV” or “Pray for the Coal Miners of the Upper Branch Mine,” to name two.

By Tuesday, many on Facebook were appealing to Americans everywhere to leave their porch lights on all night to show support for the victims of the mine explosion. I didn’t have the nerve to reply to several well-meaning friends with what seemed an obvious response to such a request: “Wouldn’t that actually benefit the coal companies more than the miners and their families? Is that what we really want to do at this particular moment?”

I am a native of West Virginia, having grown up in Pocahontas County, an area known more for tourism (skiing, hiking, biking, and trout fishing) than for the business of mining coal.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

It’s the stuff of cross-stitch samplers and sunny sermons: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

It’s meant to console, to inspire confidence, to help us “claim victory” over illness or heartache or the wiles of the devil. For all the earnestness with which it is exhorted and embraced, it is also patently untrue.

Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.

They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

Today would have been my sister’s 46th birthday. She died in a car accident in 1987. She was 23 years old and a newly-minted 6th grade teacher. Her name was Kim.

In the fog of grief that November my parents and I listened to the well-meaning words of family, friends, and neighbors who tried to offer comfort, whose own heads were spinning with disbelief at the loss of this beautiful girl whom they too knew and loved. We were all groping, in vain, for meaning.

We rarely seem to ponder questions of theodicy (why a good God permits evil and suffering) when things are going well, when we have our wits about us and the issue is more theoretical than personal. Unfortunately, theodicy usually kicks us in the stomach through a tragedy or loss that leaves us stunned, emotionally spent, and choking with rage and grief.

What has struck me most about God-talk and the recent earthquake in Haiti is this: Whether God’s (inscrutable) ways are being defended or God’s very existence is being denied, the kind of God under consideration seems to be something on the order of a comic-book superhero.... READ MORE.

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

“The Christian religion is one of those subjects about which it is cool to be ignorant.”

Rowan Williams

It’s a kind of unspoken truism of the academic world: Religion departments are the only faculties in a college or university forbidden to be committed to their subject matter. Professors of religion should study religion, the reasoning goes, but not actually practice it. Religion scholars can admire particular traditions or doctrines but they can’t really take them seriously. (Not if they want to be taken seriously).

So it’s common to hear: “We don’t teach religion; we teach about religion.” But, as John Dixon has pointed out, “does anyone ever say, ‘We don’t teach chemistry. We teach about chemistry.’” .... READ MORE.