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Commentary: Passover’s Message of Religious Freedom

An Orthodox Jewish priest blows a trumpet before a reenactment ceremony of the Passover sacrifice in Jerusalem, on April 18, 2016. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun.

Lawrence Grossman | April 22, 2016

On Friday evening, Jews around the world will gather in their homes for the seder, the ritual meal marking the beginning of the weeklong celebration of Passover, the holiday that commemorates the emancipation of Israelite slaves from Egyptian bondage more than 3,000 years ago.

The biblical account of that exodus from bondage to freedom begins with history’s first recorded demand for religious liberty. Moses, speaking in the name of the Lord, demands of Pharaoh, “Let my people go so they might celebrate a festival for me in the wilderness.” Pharaoh’s reply, in turn, set the pattern for all later deniers of religious freedom: “I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:1-2).

This dramatic confrontation and the ensuing triumph of freedom over slavery have made the Passover story a source of hope and inspiration for many other oppressed religious minorities over the centuries. Sadly, violent religious persecution persists today in many parts of the world, forcing Christians and other minorities to choose between flight and coerced conversion, or even death.

The group that calls itself the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, has conquered large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq. In the areas under its control, it has banned all other religious expressions, expelling or forcibly converting non-Muslims such as Yazidis and Christians, as well as Shiite Muslims, and destroying many of their religious sites. Its fighters rape women and make them into sex slaves.

The Islamic State has established a menacing presence in Libya as well. There, the group terrorizes Christians — most of them Egyptian Copts — destroying churches and abducting or slaughtering innocent people on the trumped-up charge they were seeking to proselytize Muslims.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared last month that “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions — in what it says, what it believes and what it does” against religious minorities in the Middle East. The Islamic State’s “entire worldview is based on eliminating those who do not subscribe to its perverse ideology.”

Boko Haram — an ISIS ally — proclaims the goal of establishing an Islamic state in Nigeria. It has killed about 7,500 Christians over the last two years and enslaved hundreds of young girls.

In Pakistan, religious minorities face danger on two fronts — from Islamist gangs and from the government. On Easter Sunday, four men identified with the Taliban attacked a park in Lahore where Christians had gathered, killing more than 70 and injuring many others. Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities discriminate against the 4 million Ahmadiyya Muslims in the country, refusing to recognize them as Muslims and criminalizing the practice of their faith.

Iran is extremely hostile to members of faiths other than Shiite Islam. Participation in the Baha’i faith is outlawed; seven of its leaders and scores of its followers are serving indefinite prison terms. Baha’is suffer from employment discrimination and can have their property confiscated. Iran’s small Christian minority and even Sufi Muslims also live under severe restrictions and are subject to arbitrary detention.

As Jewish families sit down to the seder and raise their voices in recitation of the ancient Jewish liberation story, they should remember that Jews and many others today struggle to maintain their faith under oppressive conditions.Saudi Arabia, whose rulers espouse the extreme Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, puts severe restrictions on non-Muslims living in the country and represses the practice of Shiite Islam. In 2014, the government defined any criticism of the country’s official interpretation of Islam as “terrorism,” placing anyone who expresses unpopular religious views in danger of imprisonment, lashings and even execution.

In Europe, Islamist religious violence has taken a different form — the targeted killing of Jews as a precursor to indiscriminate attacks on the population as a whole. Thus the killings of 35 at the Brussels airport and metro in March was preceded by the murder of four people at the city’s Jewish Museum of Belgium in 2014, and the toll of 135 dead in the Paris terror attacks last November came less than a year after four Jews were killed while shopping for Shabbat at a kosher store in the city.

There have been an alarming number of other attacks on Jews in European cities, synagogues and other Jewish institutions have been placed under heavy guard, and the number of Jews who have decided on, or are considering, emigration is rising.

While pharaohs may not exist in 2016, disdain for the rights and even the physical safety of minority religions has not abated. In fact, today many are more endangered than ever.

As Jewish families sit down to the seder and raise their voices in recitation of the ancient Jewish liberation story, they should remember that Jews and many others today struggle to maintain their faith under oppressive conditions, and that it is our responsibility to help them, “For you know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

Lawrence Grossman is the American Jewish Committee’s director of publications.

Burundi’s Catholic Church Rejects Government’s ‘Terrorist’ Label

Students from the Catholic University light candles during a night vigil in solidarity with the Burundian people in Kenya's capital Nairobi, on December 16, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Noor Khamis *Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-BURUNDI-CATHOLIC, originally transmitted on April 21, 2016. — Students from the Catholic University light candles during a night vigil in solidarity with the Burundian people in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, on December 16, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Noor Khamis.

Fredrick Nzwili | Religion News Service | April 21, 2016

A serious breakdown between the powerful Roman Catholic Church and the government in Burundi is raising concerns over stability in the East African nation, as senior government officials accuse the church of sponsoring violence.

Since April 2015, the country has been racked by chaos after President Pierre Nkurunziza agreed to run for a third term. Catholic bishops had strongly opposed the move, saying the constitution was clear that a president should serve only two terms.

Last month, Pascal Nyabenda, president of the National Assembly, accused the Catholic Church of playing a “purely political, not spiritual role,” and said the government would not talk to “sponsors of terrorism.”

Antony Mbandi, of the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa, struck back at the use of the term “terrorists” to refer to government critics.

“The church is crying just like everyone else,” he said. “They are crying for an end to the violence. To accuse the church of sponsoring the violence is to clutch on some loose straws.”

Mbandi said the Catholics in Eastern Africa are putting pressure on the international community to push for an end to the bloodshed in the majority Catholic country.

“We are urging that peace and dialogue becomes the government approach to solving the conflict,” Mbandi added.

Still, with the increasing assassinations, torture, intimidation, deaths and the injection of more than 250,000 refugees, the bishops said, the country was at a crossroads. They urged Christian politicians to stop the country from plunging further into chaos.

Under an April 2 resolution, the U.N. Security Council will consider deploying U.N. police to the country, a move the Burundi government has accepted.

Fredrick Nzwili is an RNS correspondent based in Nairobi.

5 Faith Facts About Prince: Sexy, Provocative and Religious

Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Chris Pizzello/Files. *Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-PRINCE-OBIT, originally transmitted on April 21, 2016. — Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Chris Pizzello/Files.

Kimberly Winston | Religion News Service | April 21, 2016

Rock ‘n’ roll, pop, soul, R&B icon Prince has died at age 57. His life and career were often shrouded in mystery; he used a symbol instead of a name to become “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince,” and he was cagey about his sexuality. But he was clearly and undoubtedly a man of faith. Here are five faith facts about Prince Rogers Nelson, musician, who died April 21.

1. He grew up a Seventh-day Adventist.

When he was a child, he often suffered epileptic seizures. One day he told his mother he wasn’t going to have them anymore. She asked why, and he responded, “Because an angel told me so.”

2. As an adult, he became a Jehovah’s Witness.

In 2001, after two years of consideration, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness. In an interview with The New Yorker, he said: “I don’t see it really as a conversion. More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’”

3. Prince proselytized door-to-door for the Witnesses.

In 2003, a Minneapolis newspaper carried a story about a couple who answered their door to find Prince offering a copy of The Watchtower, the Witness magazine.

“Though they were Orthodox Jews, and it was Yom Kippur, they were also Prince fans,” Sean O’Hagan of The Observer wrote of the incident. “They welcomed him into the house where, with his friend Larry Graham, erstwhile member of Sly & the Family Stone, one of Prince’s core influences, he spread the word of Jehovah for 20 minutes before moving on to the next house.”

4. Prince’s songs were sometimes mini-sermons.

In 2013, the writer Touré wrote “I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon.” In it, he explored the Christianity he found at the root of much of Prince’s music.

“The amount of discussion of sex is this much,” Touré said during an interview with The Observer, holding his hands a foot apart, “and the amount of discussion of religion and spirituality and God and Jesus is this much” — doubling the space between his hands.

In the book, Prince’s guitarist Dez Dickerson describes Prince as a “guy who really is thoughtful and introspective and holds religious considerations close to his heart and ponders those questions sincerely and genuinely and deeply.”

5. An original in music, Prince was also an original in his religious thinking.

In an undated interview with V Magazine’s Vanessa Grigoriadis, Prince discussed — reluctantly — the relationship between his sometimes racy lyrics and his faith: “We are sensual beings, the way God created us, when you take the shame and taboo away from it,” he said, and then described religion as “like a force, an electro-magnetic one or like gravity, that puts things in motion.”

The things Prince put in motion — in music and beyond — will last long after his death.

Kimberly Winston is a freelance religion reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covers atheism and freethought for RNS.

Is the Pope Catholic?

David Gibson | Religion News Service | April 20, 2016

NEW YORK — That’s always been the jokey answer to a dumb question, but it’s now a serious issue for Catholic intellectuals who have been criticizing, and defending, the Catholic bona fides of Pope Francis, especially since the pontiff released a landmark document on family life earlier this month that some say calls into question the church’s teachings on the permanence of marriage.

“A catastrophe,” one traditionalist blogger called the apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” which was released by the Vatican on April 8. Francis “departs from church teaching” in the exhortation, wrote another.

“Suddenly the rhetorical question, ‘Is the pope Catholic?’ doesn’t seem so rhetorical anymore,” Claire Chretien wrote in a pointed critique at the conservative Web outlet The Federalist.

The unusual debate — after all, it’s not often that a pope is accused of heterodoxy — has grown so serious, in fact, that on Tuesday evening (April 19), the Jesuit-run Fordham University hosted a panel of Catholic experts titled: “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Among the four participants was New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who has been one of Francis’ leading critics on the Catholic right, openly wondering about the pontiff’s doctrinal purity and whether he is leading the Catholic Church into schism.

Also on the panel was former New York Times religion writer and Commonweal magazine editor Peter Steinfels; Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a theologian at Manhattan College; and Alice Kearney Alwin, director of mission and ministry at Marymount School, a Catholic girls school in Manhattan. John Sexton, the polymath president emeritus of New York University and a Fordham theology alum, moderated.

While none of the panelists directly challenged Francis’ faith, Douthat was most outspoken in criticizing Francis’ approach in general, and in “Amoris Laetitia” specifically, a document that Douthat said was “designed to introduce a level of ambiguity into church teaching that had been absent.”

“It’s clearly a deliberately destabilizing document. And whether that destabilization is good or bad is something that liberals and conservatives can argue about,” he said.

Steinfels took up that argument, saying that “what Ross might call ambiguity I might call ‘complexity.’”

But he added that did not change what Steinfels said was his basic pessimism about the future of the church, at least in North America.

Alwin, on the other hand, said she was much more positive about the kind of effect Francis has had, especially on the children she deals with.

She described herself as “joy-filled” about this papacy and the more merciful aspect of the faith that, whatever the doctrinal disputes, she says is having an impact on the next generation.

“Catholicism in the West is divided, disorderly, badly catechized and extremely liberal in terms of the perspective of the average self-identified Catholic.”Imperatori-Lee was also relatively upbeat — at one point she noted to laughter that it was odd the two women were more hopeful about the future of Catholicism than the three men — and she said it was important to see the exhortation as “a global document” and not just about U.S. concerns.

She also noted that Francis also spoke in very supportive terms about feminism, in contrast with other church leaders. “I enjoyed that line,” she said.

But Douthat was steadfast that the contemporary Catholic Church is not at all rules-obsessed and harsh and in need of a transfusion of mercy, as Francis and his supporters suggest. On the contrary, he said, he sees no signs of such conservatism – and he acknowledged that conservative Catholicism is “divided and confused” and “has no clear answers” to the crisis.

“But the idea that there is this glorious future church waiting to be born as long as we get rid of the dead hand of 1950s Catholicism that the pope seems to perceive everywhere he looks is nuts! It’s just nuts. That’s not where Catholicism in the West is right now,” he said.

“Catholicism in the West is divided, disorderly, badly catechized and extremely liberal in terms of the perspective of the average self-identified Catholic.”

What Douthat and the panelists seemed to agree on was that change, or “development,” as theologians like to put it, does happen in church — a fact that traditionalists do not often like to recognize — but that the real debate is about how change happens, and what can change and what is essential.

“I think that where we agree is that the church, rather than having a desire to be liked, expresses in the world God’s desire to save, however that happens,” said Imperatori-Lee. “If the church is not doing the work of salvation, then it is a failure.

“Insofar as the church does the work of salvation, then it succeeds. What we keep should be at the service of salvation for the most number of people at any given point in history. And what we discard should be anything that is an impediment to that will to save.”

In the end, then, it seemed that the question was not so much whether the pope is Catholic, but what Catholicism is.

David Gibson is a national reporter for RNS and an award-winning religion journalist, author and filmmaker.

Sanders Delivers His Campaign Pitch, Wrapped in Praise for the Pope

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks with media and supporters during his visit to the Vatican , April 15, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini — U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks with media and supporters during his visit to the Vatican, April 15, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini.

Rosie Scammell | Religion News Service | April 16, 2016

VATICAN CITY — In the end, Bernie Sanders got something almost as good as a picture with Pope Francis: blanket international news coverage and a chance to deliver his stump speech wrapped in the words of the pontiff, one of the most popular leaders on the planet.

Oh, and, rumor had it, a sleepover in the pope’s own Vatican guest house.

All in all, not too shabby for a guy who’s trying to catch Hillary Clinton, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, in Tuesday’s (April 19) pivotal primary in New York, the delegate-rich home state of both candidates.

“I believe that the pope has played an historic and an incredible role in trying to create a new world economy and a new vision for the people of our planet,” Sanders told a scrum of reporters outside the Vatican walls shortly after delivering his 10-minute address at a Vatican conference on social justice on Friday.

“What he is saying is that we cannot continue to go forward when so few have so much and when greed is such a destructive force, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world,” Sanders continued.

“I have long been a supporter of the economic vision of Pope Francis. His views on climate change have played a profound … role in turning many people’s minds around about the urgency of the moment in terms of dealing with climate change,” the Vermont senator added.

At the impromptu briefing, Sanders was also greeted by a handful of cheering supporters — more evidence of the passion he inspires among his followers, and perhaps an indication that the quick trip would pay political dividends, a calculation that was a matter of intense debate ahead of time.

Speaking to Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, Sanders insisted that “the conference is not a political event.” The presidential hopeful also rejected the charge that his appearance at the conference was an expression of the Vatican’s support for his candidacy.

Sanders had been invited by a Vatican official to speak at a conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on “Centesimus Annus,” a landmark social justice encyclical by St. John Paul II.

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, head of the academy, has said he invited Sanders because he was the only U.S. presidential candidate who showed a deep interest in the teachings of Francis.

During his 10-minute address, titled “The Urgency of a Moral Economy,” Sanders slammed the current global financial system and praised Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment, which called for an overhaul of the world’s approach to economics and climate change.

“As Pope Francis made powerfully clear last year in (the encyclical) ‘Laudato Si’,’ we have the technology and know-how to solve our problems — from poverty to climate change to health care to protection of biodiversity,” Sanders said.

“We also have the vast wealth to do so, especially if the rich pay their way in fair taxes rather than hiding their funds in the world’s tax and secrecy havens — as the Panama Papers have shown.”

Throughout his speech, which largely reprised applause-winning lines about Wall Street greed and the wealthy that he delivers at his campaign rallies, Sanders referred to the “common good,” a phrase that is central to Catholic social teaching. It is also invoked frequently by Francis, often in contrast to the kind of individualism that many say characterizes American society.

Sanders arrived in Rome just hours after his rambunctious debate in Brooklyn with Clinton; a nonobservant Jew, Sanders was accompanied by his wife, Jane Sanders — who was raised Catholic — and 10 family members, including four grandchildren.

Traveling straight to the conference after touching down in Rome — like many tourists, he was delayed by customs — Sanders was seated next to the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, with whom he shook hands after the speech.

Morales had a private audience with the pope on Friday morning, during which they discussed social policy among other topics.

But as the day’s event came to a close, a similar official meeting between Francis and Sanders seemed unlikely.

In a note to the conference delegates, the pope apologized for not being able to greet them. Francis said he was busy preparing for a daylong trip to the Greek island of Lesbos on Saturday, where he will meet with refugees.

Sanders did not comment on whether he was disappointed a meeting had not been scheduled with the pope.

But church sources and some reports late Friday said that Sanders (though not the rest of his party) was in fact staying over in the Vatican guest house, the Casa Santa Marta, where the pope also lives.

That would make an “unplanned” meeting, in the hallways or over breakfast, a much stronger possibility.

It would certainly not be beyond Vatican practice to announce at a later date that a meeting had taken place.

The Democrat’s arrival at the Vatican followed a week of speculation surrounding the visit, focused largely on whether the U.S. senator would meet Francis. The Vatican asserted the presidential hopeful had been invited by a bishop, rather than the pontiff, stating no meeting between Sanders and the pope was scheduled.

Rosie Scammell covers the Vatican for RNS.

White House Sees ‘Moral Obligation’ to Halt Payday Loans

Payday-loans2

Adelle M. Banks | Religion News Service | April 15, 2016

WASHINGTON — White House officials have joined faith leaders in endorsing an end to payday lending abuses that often charge triple-digit interest rates.

Valerie Jarrett, Cecilia Munoz and Jeff Zients, all top aides to President Obama, met Thursday (April 14) with religious leaders from across the country who described “heart-wrenching stories” of congregants whose lives had been ravaged by payday loans.

“What emerged was a common, powerful theme: that we have a moral obligation as a country to do something to stop payday lenders from preying on consumers by trapping them in an endless cycle of debt,” the trio wrote in a White House online post.

The faith leaders, who represented Southern Baptists and Reform Jews, among others, recommended ways to address abuses in payday lending. Obama’s advisers noted that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau began working in 2015 on rules to reduce such abuses.

“Yet even as there is widespread agreement across a diverse array of faith communities that something needs to be done to address payday lending abuses, too often these reasonable efforts face stiff resistance from the special interests supported by the payday loan industry,” the three advisers said.

The meeting came a day after LifeWay Research released a survey that showed three-quarters of Christians consider payday loans to be “sinful.” The survey was sponsored by Faith for Just Lending, a coalition of religious groups opposing the lending practices that also issued a report on “The Collateral Consequences of Payday Loan Debt.”

Stephen Reeves of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a member of the coalition, was among the leaders advocating for additional government action to limit payday lending.

“It is time for lawmakers and regulators to step up, listen to the voice of the people so often drowned out by industry money and political influence, and enact fair and responsible boundaries for these predatory products,” he said.

Adelle M. Banks is production editor and a national reporter for RNS.