Journal of Religion and Health

As a remedy, Levin recommends that the Surgeon General of the United States become an active spokesperson for this more upstream approach to public health.  The Surgeon General’s celebrated “bully pulpit” is an underutilized asset that can rally public and private resources around focused outcomes.  This has been done successfully in the past for smoking, HIV/AIDS, and childhood obesity.  Levin also recommends that the Surgeon General advocate for expanded “midstream” partnerships between federal, state, and local health departments and faith-based, community, and neighborhood institutions that can provide personal and tangible resources to extend the public health mission.  Congregations and other faith-based organizations can be major players in public health, enabling access to people, money, skills, and spheres of influence that can help us meet our nation’s public health goals.  This could be especially valuable in this time of scarce federal resources.

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health.  The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.

For many Americans, thinking of Kuwait may spark thoughts of the First Gulf War.
However Dr. Alessandra Gonzalez, an alumna and research fellow with the Baylor Institute for the Study of Religion, thinks of feminism. Gonzalez is the author of the book ­ “Islamic Feminism in Kuwait: The Politics and Paradoxes.” It brings the paradox of feminism in this small Middle Eastern country to the forefront.
Gonzalez said she became interested in Islamic feminism while searching for a topic for her dissertation.
During her search, Gonzalez said she noticed that women in Kuwait weren’t granted full political rights — meaning the right to vote and run for office ­— until 2005. Gonzalez wanted to know why.
“I wanted to know what had motivated these women to fight for their political rights within their faith and tradition,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said Kuwaiti women are heavily influenced by the society and culture they live in, which is traditionally conservative. Many of these women, she said, many women still want to maintain some traditional values, although they want equal rights.
“We all have outside factors that influence our personal decisions,” Gonzalez said.
Through surveys and interviews, Gonzalez found younger Kuwaitis want to combine traditional and modern values in their approach to feminism.
“The youth I talked to hold both modern and traditional values,” Gonzalez said. “There’s still a desire to maintain some identity with the past.”
Gonzalez traveled to Kuwait and did her research through a combination of 1,000 surveys given to Kuwaiti college students and 30 in-depth interviews with both men and women about women’s rights. Gonzalez said initial research for the book took two years, and it took two more years for her to write, edit and publish the book.
Dr. Paul Froese, who served as the chair of Gonzalez’s dissertation committee, said Gonzalez wrote the book in an attempt to describe a phenomenon frequently misunderstood in the West.
“Feminism comes in different forms,” Froese said. “There’s not one route to greater gender equality, just like there’s not one route to greater democracy.”
Surprised by her findings, Gonzalez said she had to reconsider many of her own views about Islam and women’s rights in the Middle East.
“These women are agents of their own change and don’t need to be saved,” Gonzalez said.
In addition, Gonzalez said some men are helping women gain more rights in Kuwait.
“I think one of the greatest analogies I was told is that the country is like a family,” Gonzalez said. “Men and women work together.”
Gonzalez said while she uses the term Islamic feminism in her book, many people she interviewed were hesitant to identify as feminists.
“Many people didn’t say they were feminists,” Gonzalez said. “They were more likely to say ‘I’m for women’s equality’ or ‘I’m for women’s rights.’”
Most women Gonzalez surveyed or interviewed were concerned about the issue of economic independence.
The more conservative aspects of the culture often encourage women to stay at home — which can limit their ability to work or learn skills.
“Equal pay laws are on the books, but it’s sometimes difficult for women to get jobs because they don’t have the necessary skill sets,” Gonzalez said.
Some other important issues to these women were access to education and professional training and personal status laws, she said.
Personal status law is the body of law covering issues such as marriage, divorce and child custody. In Kuwait, this type of law is deeply rooted in the holy books of Islam, the Quran and the Hadith. The Hadith consists of sayings attributed to Muhammad, but not stated in the Quran.
Gonzalez said she hopes her book is helpful to anyone who wants to learn more about faith and women’s rights in another country.
She said she thinks that possibilities can open up when people take the time to see an issue from another viewpoint.
“As American feminists have their debates I think we can learn from these women to take progress slowly and check in on ourselves. An element of self-criticism is healthy.”

Is Jewish religious observance an influence on health?  According to Jeff Levin of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, the answer appears to be yes.  In a paper published in the October issue of the Israel Medical Association Journal, adult Israelis who attend synagogue at least monthly do significantly better according to several measures of physical health.  Regular synagogue-goers reported fewer physical symptoms and diagnosed chronic diseases and are less beset by physical and functional limitations that impeded their daily activities, even after accounting for age and other factors that may influence health.  In addition, frequent prayer was used as a means to cope with physical challenges and infirmities.  Data were from the Israeli sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, containing 1,287 Jewish adults aged 50 or over.

These new findings add to the results of a series of recent studies conducted by Levin using data from large population samples of Jewish adults in both Israel and the Jewish diaspora, including the U.S.  Across these studies, greater commitment to living a Jewish religious life has been found to be associated with greater physical and mental health, including less psychological distress and more happiness and well-being.  The present results, according to Levin, add to the growing “evidence of a health benefit from Jewish religiousness”—the possibility that going to shul (synagogue) is good for the for the mind and body as well as for the soul.  Additional analyses are ongoing at Baylor, and Levin plans to follow up this work with a survey of Jewish congregations.

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health. The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.

In Healing to All Their Flesh:  Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Spirituality, Theology, and Health, Levin and Meador have invited ten leading Jewish and Christian theological, pastoral, ethical, and religious scholars to reflect on the “how” and “why” of religion’s impact on health and healing.  The contributors do so by examining overlooked issues of theology and meaning that lie at the foundation of religion’s apparently beneficial effect on health.  These include insightful essays on aging, bioethics, the physician-patient relationship, spiritual development, and other topics, and draw on wisdom from many fields, including philosophy, theology, rabbinics, political theory, and biblical studies.  Authors are among the leading academic rabbinic scholars and Christian theologians in the world, all with many years of scholarly writing on the interface of Jewish or Christian thought with medicine and healing.

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health.  The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion

These new results build on several recent studies conducted by Levin and by colleagues in the U.S., Europe, and Israel.  An active Jewish religious life is associated with less depression, anxiety, and psychological distress and with greater happiness, life satisfaction, and even health, both in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora, including the U.S.  The next step for researchers, says Levin, will be to “identify just what it is about going to shul (synagogue) that is contributing to the salutary impact here.”  Follow-up analyses using international data are currently ongoing at Baylor.

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health. The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.

This is WORLD’s fifth year of honoring a book published during the past 12 months. Our first two times we chose works that directly explained Scripture: Tim Keller’s The Reason for God and Crossway’s ESV Study Bible. The last two times we praised works that applied biblical thinking to key current debates: Arthur Brooks’ The Battle and, last year, two books—Should Christians Embrace Evolution? and God and Evolution—that eviscerated a recently trendy doctrine, theistic evolution.

This year some evangelicals are displaying a pessimistic sense of decline. Internally and externally, Christian denominations are “sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Amid despair, Baylor professor Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (HarperOne) provides long-term perspective. It is WORLD’s 2012 Book of the Year.

One reason is that Stark, unusual among academic historians, writes well: He was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune and the Denver Post before gaining a Ph.D. (He then taught at the University of Washington for 32 years before heading to Baylor in 2004.) A second reason for honoring Stark is his lifetime of achievement: In 28 books—one from 15 years ago, The Rise of Christianity, prefigures his new work—Stark has employed both statistics and historical testimony to shoot down stereotypes.

Stark begins Triumph by describing the Asian competitors to indolent Roman paganism that had emerged 2,000 years ago. They had a competitive advantage: “Roman paganism offered very little in the way of community. Most Romans were very irregular and infrequent visitors to the temples … what most dramatically set the Oriental faiths apart from Roman paganism was their capacity to generate congregations.”

Cults of Bacchus, Dionysius, Isis, Cybele, and others, he notes, had regular meetings and strong ties among members, who for moments could transcend their “remarkably filthy existence.” Stark notes that “the smell of urine, feces, and decay permeated everything.” The Holy Land wasn’t much better: “A recent analysis of decayed human fecal remains in an ancient Jerusalem cesspool found an abundance of tapeworm and whipworm eggs, indicating that almost everyone had them.”

Christianity at first seemed to Rome like one cult among others, but over time others succumbed as bad news made the Good News stand out more. Stark notes that disease readily spread in dirty ancient cities, so Christians became blessings to their communities not only spiritually but physically. Simple provision of food and water to severely weakened people often allowed them to recover: Nursing by Christians may have cut mortality by two-thirds.

Stark doesn’t sugarcoat common pagan practices such as abortion and infanticide: Because of a preference for boys similar to that in India and China today, historians estimate that while Christianity was on the rise Rome generally had 131 males per 100 females. (With no way to treat infections and not even any soap, abortion also killed many women and left others sterile.) The male/female ratio was 140/100 in North Africa and other parts of the empire.

Abortion was as vile then as now and physically even harder on women. The famous Roman medical writer Aulas Cornelius Celsus urged surgeons to use “extreme caution and neatness” as they killed the unborn child with a long needle or spike, and then forced a “greased hand” up the vagina and into the uterus—all this without any anesthesia. The surgeon would then insert a hook “into an eye or ear or the mouth” of the unborn child, and pull him out, unless the baby was positioned crosswise or backward, in which case the surgeon should slice him up and pull him out piece by piece.

Stark shows that ancient Greece and Rome were not glorious: Many residents were slaves and even those who were free lived at a bare subsistence level. Much as in Europe today, Romans started having few children—even when emperors offered subsidies to those who had more—and fertility fell below replacement levels. Meanwhile, the Roman government became corrupt and inflation set in. Rulers thought of new ways to rob taxpayers and killed Christians whenever they needed scapegoats.

After Stark spends 200 pages on the triumph of Christianity, he turns to some defeats. The biggest ones came in the Middle East and across northern Africa, where Muslims murdered hundreds of thousands. Stark, quoting Muslim bragging about churches and lives destroyed, points out that “a great deal of nonsense has been written about Muslim tolerance.” He calls the Crusades a “fundamentally defensive” counter-attack “precipitated by Islamic provocations, by many centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places.”

Stark also criticizes other historians for being “as gullible as tourists, gaping at the monuments, palaces, and conspicuous consumption of Rome.” He decries “the inability of intellectuals to value or even to notice the nuts and bolts of real life,” and goes on to note medieval progress in windmills, crop rotation, chimneys, and a host of other practical matters.

He also calls “the Renaissance” a ridiculous myth: “Had there really been a return to classical knowledge, it would have created an era of cultural decline since Christian Europe had long since surpassed classical antiquity in nearly every way.”

And yet, Stark mocks the idea of a medieval “Age of Faith,” for “the masses of medieval Europeans not only were remarkably skeptical, but very lacking in all aspects of Christian commitment.” Most people seldom if ever went to church, and some who did slept and snored, played cards while the pastor preached, or brought their dogs: “Most medieval Europeans were completely ignorant of the most basic Christian teachings,” and many priests did not know the Lord’s Prayer or other fundamentals.

The book has one major weakness. While Stark is right to see the triumph of Christianity as integral to the triumph of science—”It was only because Europeans believed in God as the Intelligent Designer of a rational universe that they pursued the secrets of creation”—he criticizes commitment to biblical inerrancy. Still, it’s clear that the Protestant Reformation increased Christian commitment and even contributed to improvements in the Roman Catholic Church, as a “Church of Piety” arose to challenge “the Church of Power.”

In later chapters, Stark compares American religious liberty to the state churches of Europe and sees denominationalism as a strength, not a weakness. He looks at Christian growth around the world in recent decades as one more assault on the conventional wisdom that modernity trumps religion. He avoids triumphalism in writing about Christianity’s long-term triumph—we do not know what tomorrow will bring—and he teaches us to avoid pessimism in considering our temporary problems.

For, as Samuel Stone wrote about the Christian church in 1866, “‘Mid toil and tribulation, / And tumult of her war, / She waits the consummation / Of peace for evermore; / Till with the vision glorious / Her longing eyes are blest, / And the great church victorious / Shall be the church at rest.”

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The fallout from government disclosure of alien contact, presuming that there is indeed anything at all to disclose, is a controversial subject that has been subject to speculation—and worry—by federal officials and academic scientists for many decades.  It has been generally assumed that religious beliefs are too fragile to withstand the possibility that life exists elsewhere in the universe.  According to the new findings, however, this is not so.  “If the present data, from this study and from other surveys and polls, tell us anything,” says Levin, “it is that most Americans would just keep going about their business should the government some day choose to disclose evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth.”

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health.  The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.

Levin identifies ten key Jewish biblical and rabbinic themes that he believes should inform efforts to construct a national response to the healthcare crisis.  These include b’rit (covenant), k’dushah (holiness), tzedek (justice), chesed (mercy), mip’nei darkhei shalom (for the sake of peace), pikuach nefesh (to save a life), k’lal (peoplehood), tikkun olam (repair of the world), t’shuvah (repentance), and jovel (jubilee).  He also reflects on policy-related, economic, political, and moral challenges that may interfere with efforts to apply these ethical themes to the national debate on healthcare.  This would be a missed opportunity and a tremendous disappointment, says Levin, as Jewish ethics communicate clearly that “the health of populations is a communal responsibility and that when any of us suffer we are all suffering and we all must join together to marshal an effective response.”  This is a message, he believes, that needs to be taken to heart by both Democrats and Republicans as they craft a bipartisan and informed approach to this important issue.

Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor, where he serves as University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and director of the Program on Religion and Population Health.  The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.

“Both Buddhists and Hindus, though still relatively small compared to the large Christian groups, have grown to the point that they are beginning to exert significant influence on the key issues that most affect their lives,” said J. Gordon Melton, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of American Religious History with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, who was in charge of assembling the data on both groups.

The census, the most comprehensive statistical assessment of data from the 2,000-plus religious groups active in the United States, is made every 10 years by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. The complete summary may be viewed at this link: http://www.rcms2010.org/press_release/ACP%2020120501.pdf

Both Hindus and Buddhists have temples in most states, and “the groups now regularly voice their opinions on U.S. relations with predominantly Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Melton said. “Like the Muslim congregations, Hindus and Buddhists are found in every part of the country, but they are concentrated in the big cities and still have not begun to appear in the smaller cities and rural areas.”

Another significant finding was that all areas of American religion have grown, although specific groups — especially some of the larger Christian churches — have declined or stagnated.

Southern Baptists, whose ranks grew spectacularly for a generation as it became a national organization, decreased dramatically since the year 2000. United Methodist and Evangelical Lutheran membership also decreased.

Both Muslims and Mormons (Latter-day Saints) showed dramatic increases in percentages, the former from both immigration and penetration of the African-American community, the latter from movement out of its base in the Mountain states to all parts of the country. Muslims are distinct as the majority are of Indo-Pakistani background, the second largest group being African-American, with Arab Americans a distinct minority. There are now some 6 million Mormons and 2.6 million Muslims in the country.

Other findings showed that traditional patterns continue. The Baptist Bible Belt remains across the South, the older Reformation Protestant churches are strongest across the Midwest, Latter-day Saints dominate in the Mountain West, and Roman Catholics dominate in the northeast and southwest, including the southern third of Texas.

Rodney Stark, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, said the census in unique in its attempt to: (1) gather data from participating churches on a congregation-by-congregation basis; (2) compute membership in churches (as opposed to religious preferences as measured in national polls); and (3) assess data at the state and county level.

The 2010 census includes:

• Detailed reports from more than 200 of the largest American denominations, including many that did not participate in the 2000 study.

• Most exhaustive count ever of independent, nondenominational Christian churches, including many of the new mega-churches, some on their way to becoming new denominations.

• First-ever counts of Buddhist and Hindu congregations/temples and adherents by tradition.

• Detailed coverage of Eastern Orthodox Christian Churches.

• Improved coverage of predominantly African-American religious bodies.

• Counts of Jewish congregations and adherents by tradition.

• Expanded coverage of Muslim congregations.

• More comprehensive coverage of Amish, Friends and other traditions.

Media Contact: Terry Goodrich, 254-710-3321, terry_goodrich@baylor.edu

Longenecker first canvasses the story-telling techniques of modern novelists and filmmakers in their attempts to capture what the Biblical author left unnarrated. He then demonstrates that certain literary features within the Lukan Gospel enable us to evaluate the viability of the proposed narrative options for this episode. In line with key literary features of the Lukan Gospel, Longenecker makes a fresh constructive proposal about the “silence” in narrative causality at this curious point in the Lukan Gospel.

This literary and theological exploration of Jesus’ strangely under-narrated “escape” enables the reader of Hearing the Silence to delve deeply into some of the most significant narrative features of Luke’s theological worldview.

Bruce Longenecker (currently the W.W. Melton Chair of Religion with Baylor University’s Department of Religion) has authored or edited eleven books, including Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (2010). He is also a Distinguished Senior Fellow with Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion. The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion is an academic think-tank that specializes in social research and public policy analysis on religion.