Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall reports from the the second half of life -- on books, writing . . . her husband, house, aging relatives and grown-up kids.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
People who are against same-sex marriage often go out of their way to say, “Marriage is between one man and one woman.”
I noticed that while reporting a story about gay marriage for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, California, some years ago.
Why “one” man and “one” woman, I wondered? Isn’t it obvious that a marriage is between two people? [Read more...]
Alina, Vicki and Valerie with their husband Joe Darger at the RNA conference. Photo 2011 BF Newhall
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
I’m just back from the annual Religion Newswriters Association conference, where I got a close-up look at the polygamous Darger family – three wives, one husband – who inspired the TV series “Big Love.” [Read more...]
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
No doubt about it. After opening up the short, sweet and succint In Praise of Doubt by sociologists Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld, I’m feeling really good about my doubter status.
Doubt is what makes the difference between a person of faith and a fanatic, the authors assert. Faith is different from knowledge, as in, ”I know that I’m in Boston; I believe that my life is in God’s hands.”
This is a fascinating book that touches on everything from the Enlightenment, Calvinism and the scientific method to Marxism, modernity, fundamentalism, and the trend toward the secularization of everything.
The two authors make some useful, thoughtful distinctions along the way — for example between the words plurality and pluralism. Plurality describes a situation in which diverse groups live together and interact together, the authors note. Pluralism connotes a value judgement; it welcomes the reality of plurality.
Two very interesting minds are at work in this book. Enjoy!
In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic, by Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld, HarperOne, hardcover, 179 pages, $23.99, 2009.
John Shelby Spong's latest book arrives in bookstores this month.
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Former Episcopal Bishop of Newark John Shelby Spong says it’s time to ditch the two principle beliefs of Western religion.
The first one, he says, is that God is other, “a supernatural being who can do for me that which I cannot do for myself,” a situation that requires getting and staying on God’s good side.
The second outmoded belief is that human beings are alienated from the sacred and that our alienation requires some kind of atonement — which is another way of saying that we are all guilty as hell.
On these two premises, says Spong, have Western believers placed their dearest hopes for eternal life.
And it’s bunk.
Modernity, science, knowledge and reason have demonstrated once and for all that these premises are flawed, Spong argues in his latest book, Eternal Life: A New Vision – Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell.
To continue to believe in this sort of religion is to be naively, hopelessly and pathetically stuck in denial. To cease to believe, on the other hand, means accepting that the universe – and we ourselves – are meaningless accidents.
Spong profers a third way, however, one that involves being “fully human.” We are not really separated from God, he asserts. Rather “we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is.” We are finite, but we share in infinity. We are mortal, but we share in immortality.
Spong, who turned 78 this year, says that “when I die I will rest my case in the ‘being’ of which I am a part . . . I step beyond words at this point into the wonder of a wordless reality.”
I like Spong’s sense that human beings are “at one with all that God is.” And I can cheerfully recommend this book to readers who don’t accept the idea of a miraculously parting Red Sea, or a Jesus risen bodily from the dead.
But, for me, questions remain: Is God an other, a person with whom we can enter into a relationship? Or are we part of God, each of us an expression of the Infinite? Or something else entirely?
Unlike Spong, I don’t think I have the answers to these questions. I have no certainty regarding God’s otherness vs. God’s me-ness. I’m not at all sure that traditional, God-as-other religion is delusional. Hey, for all we know, there may be an actual God out there creating and loving the Universe even as we speak — even as we debate the fine points of God’s time-and-space-shattering nature.
As Huston Smith repeats often in his recent autobiography, Tales of Wonder, “We are born in mystery, we live in mystery, and we die in mystery.”
Or, as I am wont to say: God is Big.
Eternal Life: A New Vision, by John Shelby Spong, HarperOne, 2009, hardcover $24.99.
© 2009 Barbara Falconer Newhall
