Author Archives: Fred Yi

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Twitter’s Outreach to Religious Leaders

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In 2011, a researcher for Twitter discovered that bible verses, inspirational messages, and other tweets from religious leaders were incredibly popular among Twitter users. That discovery led the company to begin actively working with members of religious communities. Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who leads social innovation at Twitter and who spent many years abroad working with nonprofits, travels the world helping religious leaders get started on Twitter and offering advice on how to use the technology more effectively. In 2012, she worked with the Vatican to create the “@Pontifex” Twitter account for Pope Benedict XVI. We spoke with Diaz-Ortiz as she met with former White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships executive director Joshua Dubois and National Community Church lead pastor Mark Batterson in Washington, DC about Twitter’s work with religious leaders, the popularity of religious tweets, her experience working with the Vatican, and her advice on the best ways to use Twitter.

 

Keeping the Sabbath

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Read an excerpt from SABBATH IN THE SUBURBS: A FAMILY’S EXPERIMENT WITH HOLY TIME by MaryAnn McKibben Dana

JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: There was a time in America when Sundays meant a day for worship, for leisure, for spending time with family and friends.

But that was before the advent of round-the-clock shopping, cell phones, and email that place us on call 24 hours a day.

REV. MARYANN MCKIBBEN DANA: People are feeling the burden and the pressure of a fast-paced world and wanting to find some alternatives, a new rhythm of being, and how Sabbath is part of that conversation.

VALENTE: It’s an idea as old as the Bible, recorded in the book of Exodus—one of the Ten Commandments, in which God is said to have told Moses, “Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy. In it thou shalt not do any work.”

MCKIBBEN DANA: We’ll take a few minutes to share, tell the people at your table about that and why it creates Sabbath for you, or why it helps make Sabbath happen for you.

VALENTE: Now, a growing number of pastors is trying to help people reclaim at least one day of the week for Sabbath, time set aside for spiritual, mental and physical renewal—whether it’s Sunday or even another day. It’s been described as “the most precious present mankind has received from the treasure house of God.”

These clergy members are here to explore realistic ways that people can observe the Sabbath despite all of the distractions and interruptions families face on a day that’s supposed to be “holy time.”

MCKIBBEN DANA: Sabbath is the great leveler. I mean, if we take that seriously as a culture, it means that no matter what your life situation, whether you are Bill Gates or the person who cleans Bill Gates’ office, you have an inherent dignity and for a time each week, you do not need to defend your existence. To prove your worth in the culture and the marketplace.

Male workshop participant: There is a sense of, boy, I’m important, I’ve got 35 emails and 10 text messages today.

Female workshop participant: God didn’t say, “Gee, you should take a day off.” God said, “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” Oh, take a day, sure, take a day. No, it was, “Do this, this is my commandment.”

MCKIBBEN DANA: We can think about it in a very fixed way, that it’s one day where we don’t do any work. But we can also think about Sabbath in, I think, a lot of different ways and I think we can help our parishioners think about Sabbath in a different way.

VALENTE: MaryAnn McKibben Dana, a Presbyterian minister from Springfield, Virginia, chronicled her own family’s struggle to set aside one day a week in a book called “Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time.” Now she leads workshops across the country, trying to help others find some Sabbath time during each week.

MCKIBBEN DANA: We all left things undone to be here. Let it be. I also find this a helpful way to start my Sabbath, is to say, “What has been done has been done, what has not been done has not been done. Let it be.”

VALENTE: McKibben Dana was working full-time as a pastor and pregnant with her third child when she decided something in her hectic life had to change. She and her husband vowed to set aside one day of the week when they didn’t work, run errands, shop or return emails.

MCKIBBEN DANA: People ask us, “How did you do that? How did you even make that work?” Well, people do this, you know. I mean the Jewish tradition still has a very strong component of Sabbath keeping to it.

VALENTE: But it wasn’t easy. Because McKibben Dana is a pastor and has duties on Sunday, she and her family decided to observe their Sabbath on Saturdays.

Son: (playing Jenga): And then I knock it down!

MCKIBBEN DANA: (to son) No, that’s not how you play the game…

MCKIBBEN DANA: We realized that in our own faith we really have a resource in the Sabbath as an invitation from God, a command from God, to say, one time a week you set all that aside and you just enjoy one another and you enjoy God.

We don’t have to be anywhere, and they love to hear that. They call it, they call it the Sabbath but they also call it the “stay at home day.”

We’ll light a candle to sort of remind ourselves that this is a time set apart and we don’t make a big deal out of that. We just have it there. We also may have music playing in the background which puts us in a different kind of frame of mind.

VALENTE: The giant TV screen in the basement remains mute. The computer is turned off. The family doesn’t use the phone to make calls, but it will accept calls from friends.

MCKIBBEN DANA: Just being in conversation with our loved ones is a way to get in touch with the sacred part of life and so with the right intention and the right attention I think we can really see how God encounters us in all aspects of our lives.

The church is really called I think to be a counter-cultural voice, to say, you are enough, you do enough, there is a time each week where you can just stop.

If you let yourself try it and enter into it however you can with a couple of hours or a half of day, you will see a change over the course of your practice of doing it.

(to daughter): I wonder if Margaret and Caroline can get out the ingredients that are listed there. Okay?

VALENTE: McKibben Dana stresses that observing Sabbath doesn’t mean doing only things that seem traditionally religious or holy, but making “holy” the acts of ordinary life.

MCKIBBEN DANA: (to son) We’ll put these in the oven and then we’ll make lunch.

(singing at table) For help and strength and daily food we give you thanks, O Lord…

MCKIBBEN DANA: For some people the idea of taking off an entire day either feels overwhelming, or it really is logistically impossible, and so I tell people to start where you are. A lot of us don’t have an entire day at our disposal but we might have one morning on the weekend.

(to daughter) Oh, I see ducks in the water…

MCKIBBEN DANA: We love physical activity as part of our Sabbath. We love going to the state park near our house and we’ve been able to see the changing of the seasons and having the time on Sabbath to do that has really been very special for our family.

Psalm 90 is one of those beautiful psalms about time. And the passage of time. The psalmist says, “Teach us to count our days, that we might have a wise heart.” And I think that’s something that the Sabbath helps us to do, to be mindful about the passage of time.

Sabbath helps us count our days, and make them count. And not just be about doing and producing and more, more, more, but to be content and to appreciate the gift and the beauty of this day that we have.

VALENTE: And perhaps reclaim something from Scripture, which says that on the seventh day, even God rested. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Judy Valente reporting.

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EXCERPT: SABBATH IN THE SUBURBS

Read excerpts from “Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time” (Chalice Press, 2012) by MaryAnn McKibben Dana:

I have to think that Sabbath is worth the struggle. The victory is in showing up and making oneself available. Just as [my husband] and I make ourselves available to one another, having at least a short conversation each night before sleep claims us. Jus t as I seek to be present with my kids, not because every moment will feel holy and blessed but because holy and blessed moments don’t happen unless I am present.

“There are some things that spontaneity simply cannot offer,” Blu Greenberg writes about the ritualistic aspect of Shabbat. “[Sabbath] provides a steadiness and stability which … at best, creates the possibility of investing time with special meaning, experience with special value, and life with a moment of transcendence.” And so we will keep showing up to each other—and to Sabbath.

I wish for everyone to have a satisfying job and a living wage. At the same time, I wonder whether the current economic crisis in our country is a wake-up call. Infinite growth and consumption ins the trajectory we’ve been on as a culture, and it’s unsustainable. Is there a simpler, more viable way to live? Does Sabbath provide a small portal through which we glimpse a better world?

Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic and philosopher from the fourteenth century, said that the spiritual life is a process of subtraction. Similarly, Henri Nouwen characterized the Christian life as a steady progress of downward mobility. Humility and simplicity are the signs of a life in Christ. As I begin to say “no” more often, I wonder if Sabbath might be winnowing my life into something more vital.

This whole Sabbath experiment, when I get down to it, is a reaction to the inevitability of death. I’ve often thought about Sabbath from the point of view of a parent—it’s an attempt to savor the time we have with our children while they are small, to not be so distracted by the busyness of life that we forget to live. But I also experience Sabbath as a daughter whose father died way too soon. Our time is short on this earth. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel expresses as much with devastating clarity: “Time to us is sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives. … Sabbath doesn’t solve this scarcity of time, of course. But it does give me hope that, by setting aside time for holiness to happen, it can and will. And I’ll be awake enough to perceive it when it does.

From “Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time” by MaryAnn McKibben Dana (Chalice Press, 2012)

MaryAnn McKibben Dana Extended Interview

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“Just being in conversation with our loved ones is a way to get in touch with the sacred part of life and so with the right intention and the right attention I think we can really see how God encounters us in all aspects of our lives.” Watch more of our interview about observing the Sabbath with MaryAnn McKibben Dana, author of “Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time.”

 

India Sex Selection

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FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: For some months, Pooja, a 22 year old mother of three, has been coming to this crisis counseling center in a lower middle class neighborhood of Delhi.

Pooja is trying to keep her family together. Her husband and in-laws—with whom she lived in the common tradition here—threw her out of the house. The problem: all three of her children are girls.

POOJA: The family says they need sons to carry on their name and since I have only three daughters, they tried to trick me into signing divorce papers so that their son could marry again. That led to some violence when I refused and I had to run away to my mother’s house for our safety.

DE SAM LAZARO: The preference for boy children dates back centuries—driven by religious custom.

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RANJANA KUMARI (Center for Social Research): Only boys can look after the parents, they are the only ones who can perform the last rites. They are the only ones who will continue the family lineage. If all that is there then why will anybody wants to have a girl child? And also on the top of that you have to pay a dowry.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ranjani Kumari has studied the dowry system, which she says is mistakenly believed to have roots in Hindu scriptures.

KUMARI: This was never a practice anywhere prescribed but certainly it was said that when the princess goes, she must carry a number of horses because she’s used to a certain level of comfort, and so it is the duty of the king to insure the daughter is…and that gets distorted so that even the poorest of the poor who cannot afford two square meals will also have to buy things for the wedding of the daughter.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dowries were outlawed half a century ago but the system remains pervasive and adds a huge commercial dimension to marriage in India. With rising aspirations in a rapidly growing economy, sociologist Ravinder Kaur says daughters have become a financial liability.

RAVINDER KAUR (Indian Institute of Technology): They don’t want to pay dowries. They want to receive dowries. They want to give more education to the boys than to the girls, because for them, the boys are still more important.

DE SAM LAZARO: India’s census starkly bears out that bias. For every 1,000 male babies born, there are just 914 females—far fewer in some regions. In nature, the numbers are about equal. The gap began to widen in the 1990s with the advent of ultrasonography, allowing early detection of a fetus’ sex. That’s been blamed for the widespread abortion of female fetuses.

(from 2001 footage): So this is your clinic?

Dr. Kakodkar: (from 2001 footage) Yes.

DE SAM LAZARO: Abortion is legal in India but it is illegal when done for sex selection. However, tracking the intent is almost impossible as gynecologist Prakash Kakodkar admitted with startling candor in a story I reported in 2001. He does them routinely.

(to Dr. Kakodkar): So you freely admit that you do, basically, contravene the law. I mean…

DR. PRAKASH KAKODKAR: Yes, most of us do, I would say. I wouldn’t deny that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Do you face any legal sanctions?

DR. PRAKASH KAKODKAR: No, that’s what I said: there is no legal sanction because there is nothing on paper. I mean, who can ask you?

DE SAM LAZARO: The lopsided sex ratio has only spread in recent years. Two decades ago it was mainly in the northern farm states, where many families were entering the middle class thanks to India’s green revolution. Now Kaur says it’s in areas where a new middle class is emerging.

KAUR: Places like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, which are becoming more prosperous where there will be greater availability of technology and more incomes in the hands of families, they will tend to shape the family and sex select.

DE SAM LAZARO: As these areas become more affluent, fertility rates—the number of children born per woman—are declining. That’s welcomed by people concerned about population growth. These are some of India’s most densely populated regions. But when it comes to gender balance, it’s not good news, Professor Kaur says.

KAUR: You know when you want a smaller family, then the squeeze is on the girls because interestingly, suppose you’re moving from a fertility rate of four, to three. Then you want two boys and one girl. So if a lot of families in populous states want two boys and one girl, then obviously there’s going to be a great excess of boys.

DE SAM LAZARO: She says the social consequences of this demographic shift are already visible in those northern farm states, where there’s a growing shortage of brides.

KAUR: And as a result, men in these states have been importing brides from let’s say the east of India, the south of India, they’re sort of going shopping for brides wherever they can and many people call it “bride trafficking.”

DE SAM LAZARO: These marriages across India’s diverse cultural landscape can be fraught with social complication. But at the same time, Kaur sees an ever so slight improvement in the gender ratio in those states that saw early prosperity.

KAUR: Once people reach the higher realms of the middle class, which are called the stable middle class, they don’t sex select. Then they tend to view girls and boys as being of equal value. So they don’t really care whether they have two girls, whether they have one girl, one boy, etcetera.

DE SAM LAZARO: But for many years, India will present a patchwork of progress—a worsening gender balance in many places, slight improvement in some. The Center for Social Research’s Kumari sees one more positive development that’s a consequence of India’s growing and urbanizing middle class: more girls are going to school.

RANJANA KUMARI: As I said, India is full of contradictions. On the one side you see women in the villages still very disempowered but on the other side there is a brighter picture. We have the largest number of doctors, lawyers, professionals, our education level is going up for the girls. When you look at the new economy girls have got lot of new opportunities, you know, media, IT industry banking, entertainment. Whichever sector you see, women are filling the ranks in a very major way.

DE SAM LAZARO: Counseling center client Pooja never set foot in a school but she wants an education for her daughters. And that’s why she says she needs her husband’s help to provide it.

POOJA: Women are progressing more in society and I need the support of their father so that they can grow up in a proper family, so that they can get a good education, so that they can grow up and have good marriages.

DE SAM LAZARO: She’ll have an uphill battle—socially if not legally—to provide daughters with the family structure she calls ideal. But she says the best dowry her daughters could have is an education.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in New Delhi.

Father Rocky Schuster Extended Interview

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“Christianity is a corporate religion. It’s not something you do by yourself. The act of getting down and doing something only the lowest of slaves would do really defined what it means to love one another as he loved us.” Watch additional excerpts from our interview with Father Rocky Schuster, former Rector of St. James Episcopal Church, about the traditions of Holy Week.

 

Same-Sex Marriage

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BOB ABERNETHY, host: The Supreme Court heard arguments over same sex marriage this week—whether California could ban it outright under Proposition 8 and whether Congress could deny federal marital benefits to same sex couples under the Defense of Marriage Act. While Justices expressed misgivings about both measures, they also seemed to doubt whether they can, or should, resolve such conflicts. Tim O’Brien attended both hearings and files this report.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: The debate over same-sex marriage that has so divided the country brought thousands on both sides of the issue to the Supreme Court Tuesday and Wednesday. They were passionate, and together they made it one of the largest demonstrations at the high court in decades. Defenders of traditional marriage also held a separate demonstration on the National Mall.

Religious groups do not speak with one voice on the same-sex marriage issue, but more oppose it than support it.

Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, is one of the co-authors of Prop 8. He also chairs the committee on marriage of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone

ARCHBISHOP SALVATORE CORDILEONE (Archbishop of San Francisco): Why really, though, are we here? One simple reason: marriage matters to kids. What could be more beautiful or even more sacred than a man and a woman coming together to create new life?

O’BRIEN: In court Tuesday, lawyers defending Proposition 8 pressed that argument—that it furthered the state’s interest in procreation and child rearing—to some skeptical Justices:

JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: In California, couples that aren’t gay, but can’t have children, get married all the time.

CHARLES COOPER (Attorney): Yes your honor. The concern is that re-defining marriage as a genderless institution will sever its abiding connection to its historic, traditional procreative purposes. And it will re-focus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults.

JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN: Suppose a state said “because we think that the focus of marriage should be on procreation, we’re not going to give marriage licenses any more to any couple where both people are over the age of fifty-five.” Would that be constitutional?

COOPER: No, your honor. It would not be constitutional.

JUSTICE KAGAN: Because that’s the same state interest, I would think. You know, if you’re over 55, you don’t help us serve the government’s interest in regulating procreation through marriage.

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O’BRIEN: There has been growing support for same-sex marriage. A majority of Americans now support it. Nine states now allow it, three of them added only last November.

In urging the Supreme Court to find Prop 8 unconstitutional, Attorney Theodore Olson insisted gays and lesbians must have the same fundamental right to marry as heterosexual couples.

THEODORE OLSON (Attorney): It is just wrong. It is not consistent with the ideals, and the laws and the Constitution of this country to take our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and put them in a class, and deny them rights that we give to everyone else.

(in court): The case that’s before you today is whether or not California can take a class of individuals based upon their characteristics, their distinguishing characteristics, remove from them the right of privacy, liberty, association, spirituality and identity that marriage gives them.

O’BRIEN: But as the hour long argument came to a close, several Justices did not appear ready for a broad national ruling.

JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO: Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is very new. I think it was first adopted in the Netherlands in 2000. So there isn’t a lot of data about its effect. But you want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cell phones or the Internet. I mean we—we are not—we do not have the ability to see the future.

O’BRIEN: Notwithstanding all the attention the case has generated, the Court could avoid deciding it on a procedural issue: California chose not to appeal a lower court decision invalidating Prop 8 and the Justices could find that the amendment’s supporters have no legal standing to continue the case on their own.

A similar issue could derail the case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act—or DOMA—which denies gays and lesbians the federal marital benefits routinely accorded heterosexual couples. When the Obama administration declined to appeal lower court rulings finding DOMA unconstitutional, House Republican leaders stepped in to continue the fight.

The case was brought by Edie Windsor, now 84, whose spouse and companion of forty years passed away in 2009, leaving Edie the bulk of her estate. That resulted in a federal estate tax of $363,000 dollars. Even though New York recognized their marriage, she did not qualify for the federal marital deduction because of DOMA. Windsor sued the United States and won.

EDIE WINDSOR: We did win in the lower courts. Today is like a spectacular event for me, I mean it’s a lifetime kind of event, and I know that the spirit of my late spouse, Thea Spayer, is right here watching and listening and would be very proud and happy of where we’ve come to.

Edie Windsor

O’BRIEN: Windsor sat quietly in the front row of the spectators’ section as at least five Justices cast doubt on the wisdom, if not the constitutionality of DOMA.

Justice Kennedy, a moderate whose vote could be crucial, saw DOMA as intruding on matters historically left to the states:

JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY: You are at real risk of running in conflict with what has always been thought to be the essence of the state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody.

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR: What gives the federal government the right to be concerned at all at what the definition of marriage is?

JUSTICE RUTH GINSBURG: You’re saying, “No. State, there are two kinds of marriages, the full marriage and then this sort of skim milk marriage.” (laughter)

O’BRIEN: Windsor’s lawyers pointed out that DOMA affects far more than just estate taxes, that there are more than 1,100 laws that treat gay and lesbian couples differently than heterosexual couples.

JAMES ESSEX (American Civil Liberties Union): Your Social Security benefits and your survivor benefits change based on whether you are married or not, whether you get family medical leave to take care of your spouse depends on whether the federal government recognizes that your spouse is your “spouse.” Veterans benefits change, and yes, taxes change as well.

O’BRIEN: The Justices took their tentative vote in the cases Friday but no formal decisions are expected until late June. And the possibility remains they could opt to dismiss one or both cases without any meaningful decision at all.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Tim, nobody can predict what the Court will do, but as you listened to the justices in the Court, what was your sense of how they’re leaning?

O’BRIEN: It is perilous to predict a Supreme Court decision, but in this case it seemed pretty clear that both of these propositions, both of these measures, Proposition 8 and DOMA, are in real trouble. I’d be surprised if either one of them is upheld.

ABERNETHY: And if that is what the Court does, then what is the future for gay marriage?

O’BRIEN: Well, with DOMA it’s very easy. The federal government cannot deny marital benefits to same-sex married couples. With Prop 8, there’s a lot out there. We expect a very narrow decision that will affect only California, but a real huge, landmark decision is in play. I think it’s possible, although remote, but a decision that will require every state to recognize same-sex marriage and prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, from Congress to the town school board.

ABERNETHY: Did you also get the sense that the justices are considering whether the country is ready for gay marriage?

O’BRIEN: You know, Bob, so seldom is that a consideration by the justices, but I did get the sense it is a consideration in this case. Justice Sotomayor noted it took fifty years for the Court to rule in Brown v. Board of Education, desegregating the nation’s schools. That is a big concern which raises another question: if not now, when?

ABERNETHY: Tim O’Brien. Many thanks.

O’BRIEN: A pleasure.