My faith urges me to spread the good news, by example (“You shall know them by their fruits”) and also by word.

My nature readily gets the example part, but the word part demands I not ‘brag on’ belief, and shrinks from seeming to tell others what they ought to think about faith (I’m not defending this, just reporting). My upbringing says, “Don’t talk politics or religion at dinner parties, or anywhere else, if you can avoid it.” Faith mixes awkwardly with the news/entertainment media.

So, as I work on this, I hear in my head the wonderful Louisianan and novelist, Walker Percy, and the wonderful novelist, Frederick Buechner, in Vermont, chuckling away at me, out of their long experience wrestling with writing about faith for general consumption. This is not easy.

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The quest for religious freedom has always been a part of American culture. Catholics and Protestants alike fled persecution to emigrate to the new land. But their freedom to follow their own faiths depended on their willingness to tolerate all the others. Today, the religions struggling for acceptance are traditions such as Wicca and Asatru which have appeared during the last 50 years. Far from being a fringe movement, these faiths are the most recent additions to a religious category that includes native folk and tribal traditions, and accounts for approximately 6% of believers worldwide.

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On Faith is publishing selections from David Plotz’s Blogging the Bible, a series that’s been running over at our sister publication Slate. Read why Plotz started blogging the Bible here.

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by MICHELLE C. RINDELS of Religion News Service

It comes only once a century. So for the host of religious traditions that see 7 as the most sacred digit, 07/07/07 is looking like the perfect day for everything from weddings to worldwide activism.

Or at least it's better than last year's eerie 06/06/06.

According to David Frankfurter, professor of religious studies and history at the University of New Hampshire, the number 7 is characteristic of how God organizes heaven. God completes his creation in seven days. The year of Jubilee comes after seven times seven years.
There are seven cardinal sins, seven virtues, and a host of apocalyptic signs in Revelation that come in groups of seven -- seven churches and seven seals, for example.

"In the Bible it's symbolic of perfection," Frankfurter said, "and what Americans have done is kind of turned it into a lucky number."

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Above my desk in the Washington Post newsroom, amid other souvenirs of stories I’ve written, is a bumper sticker saying: “Save Our Wiccan Chaplain.” It bears a Wiccan five-pointed star, or pentacle, surrounded by the symbols of 10 other faiths, including a cross, and the words: “All Gods ... Are One God.”

It was given to me by David and Tama Oringderff, leaders of the Texas-based Sacred Well Congregation. They have worked tirelessly, and so far fruitlessly, to persuade the U.S. military to appoint a Wiccan chaplain.

This week, as Wiccans and other pagans pressed their demand for a chaplain at a July 4 rally outside the White House, the bumper sticker reminded me of a question I face every time I write about their faith.

Namely, do they worship some gods, one god or all gods? How can I explain Wicca to readers when Wiccans don’t seem to agree among themselves?

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How do you explain your faith to people who do not share your truth claims and who find your sacred practices foreign?

As a minority within a minority within a minority in the West – a Muslim, a Shia, an Ismaili – I have long struggled with that question.

When I was a child and I had to explain why I was fasting from food and drink on a certain day, or why I wore an Arabic symbol for God on a chain around my neck, I would put my head down and mutter: “My mom makes me do it.”

In a world where people from different faith backgrounds are in constant contact with one another, and there are forces who actively seek to sow division between diverse people, we need better ways to build understanding. We need what I call a ‘public language’ of faith, a language which highlights the history of our traditions, and the good works they are doing for the broader world.

Every tradition has a history, and while yours might be different from mine, I expect that you will have more understanding for who I am and how I practice faith if I tell you a little about where I come from. And every tradition has a core which seeks to serve others. And if I tell you about how the people, institutions and leader of my faith are helping people live more peaceful and prosperous lives, I think that you will have deeper respect – perhaps even admiration – for my tradition.

Today, on one of the holiest days of my life, I want to use this public language of faith, in the hopes that it will provide a window of understanding into my tradition and community.

Today, I celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Imamat of my spiritual leader, the Aga Khan.

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The On Faith site says it's a conversation about religion. I ask: "Was
Jesus religious?" Some respond with that no-brainer: "Is the Pope Catholic?"
My question about Jesus is not so easily dismissed.

Jesus responded to his critics by asserting that he had not come to pull
down, but fulfill, the moral code and prophecy. He was an outsider,
an itinerant rabbi, but he spoke with authority. His words healed people.
This was acknowledged by insiders and adversaries alike. Two whom he
healed, the Magdalene and Bartimaeus, even called him Rabboni
-- a term reserved for the president of the Temple. Yet he counseled his
followers (Matthew 23) not to allow anyone to call them Rabbi, Father,
Teacher, Leader, Director, or Master. (These English words are in
evidence in the Greek.) Is this being heeded by clergy and believers
today? Pew-sitters rarely hear anything from this chapter!
Yet it is worthy of close reading, and alarming in its severity.

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Just in case you have been living on Mars for the last decade, Muggle is the term used in the Harry Potter books to designate non-wizards and witches, i.e. human beings. Unlike the Narnia books or The Lord of the Rings where there are separate fantasy worlds portrayed, the idea of J.K. Rowling's wildly successful series is of a clandestine and parallel wizard society alongside and sometimes intersecting with human society. The seven Potter books follow three children who grow up and go to school learning to be witches and wizards and who must confront and engage an evil presence that threatens them and their world.

The children and adolescents (Muggles!) who have grown up with the Potter series read these books avidly. My husband and I have three children, now in their 20’s, who have all grown up with Harry Potter and the tension remains high in our household about the release of the 7th book. I read Harry Potter books as well and love the movies. I know many adult Muggles who do.

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How ironic that today, Islam is perceived by many as reactionary, anti-intellectual, intolerant and violent -- when for much of its history Muslim culture led the world in intellectual achievement, progressive social policy and religious tolerance ... certainly relative to Europe and the West.

What is there in the buried DNA of historic Islam that could both allay "Islamophobia" among non-Muslims ... and open a new door for those Muslims who feel they have no recourse but piety and martyrdom?

First, we must all do a better job of recovering the lost history of our world prior to 1500.

The facts are these: From 800 to 1500 CE, most of the advances in higher mathematics, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, science and engineering – plus a rich infusion of philosophy, architecture, literature, music and art – came from the Muslim universe. These advances certainly built on earlier breakthroughs in Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Persia, India, China, Africa and elsewhere. But Muslim-supported thinkers like Jabir, al Khwarizmi, al Kindi, Ibn al Haytham, Omar Khayyam, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Maimonides and many others assimilated and expanded older knowledge. In doing so, they laid the foundation of modern hi-tech civilization.

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A couple of weeks ago I was in Israel, where I was born and where much of my family still lives. I was sitting in the living room of my great aunt, where I've sat hundreds of times, listening to the same speech I've heard hundreds of times. My family is Sephardic, working class and not, shall we say, progressive. None of them needed to be convinced on the wisdom of building the Great Wall to separate Israel from various West Bank territories. They would die before they voted for anyone in the Labor party, or gave a penny to Peace Now.

Every time I visit they feel the need to give their naïve, lefty, American relative (me) a refresher course on the dangers of the Arab mind. After a few minutes I tuned them out, as I always do, and idly flipped through channels. I paused for a moment when I got to a show featuring an oversized Mickey Mouse character with a helium-voice bouncing around on dry desert land. My children weren't with me on this trip and I missed them. How cute, I thought. Next time they come with me I'll have something to show them. My Arabic is pretty rusty, so I couldn't really understand what he was saying, and neither would they. But who could resist an overstuffed, bobblehead Mouse in baggy white gloves?

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Several months ago “On Faith “(jointly published by the Washington Post and Newsweek) held a symposium at Georgetown University on "What it Means to be Muslim in America." During the discussion, panelists were asked why Muslim religious leaders around the world didn’t speak out against violence.

The Imam on the panel replied that they did. The problem was that nobody listened to them, that the press didn’t report about it because it wasn’t sensational.

So we decided to devote a week on our site to give Muslim leaders a chance to speak out. We posed three questions -- on violence, religious freedom and women’s issues -- and invited more than 50 Muslim leaders throughout the world to respond. Twenty-two people from 13 countries chose to reply to the questions. Others such as the Aga Khan wrote essays on the subject. Other contributions came from Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair, Kofi Annan and Queen Rania of Jordan. We also featured essays from Muslim scholars and journalists from around the world who have studied, taught or covered Islam.

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