Parents Should Share Doubts As Well as Beliefs
Family stresses are often at their greatest during holiday time, in part because millions of people all over the world are indeed in mixed-faith marriages and partnerships.
Personal Religion Archives
December 6, 2006 4:30 PM
Comments (6)December 20, 2006 9:01 AM
Jesus Was Inspirational Jewish Teacher
I do not believe Jesus was the son of God - as a Jew, I do not believe in the divinity of Jesus..
January 1, 2007 12:57 PM
Religious Moderates Need to Speak Up
Atheism is enjoying a certain vogue at least in part because it feels like
the last gasp of those rationalists who think that you can only be a
rationalist if you do not believe in God.
January 3, 2007 12:30 PM
A Grandmother's Last Lesson
My most formative religious experience was being with my grandmother the day before she died.
January 18, 2007 9:45 AM
Moves For Equality May Have Ancient Roots
On the whole, women have fared badly in religions down the ages, though
others may have a different view. But it may not always have been like
this.
February 11, 2007 5:41 PM
Prayers of Contemplative Gratitude
I pray every day. Sometimes, I know it is formulaic- the traditional Jewish daily prayers, addressed to God, but so much about a ritual rather than a meaning, despite all we know from Jewish tradition about kavvanah -- the intentional devotion you need for proper prayer.
March 2, 2007 8:48 AM
Modern Judaism's View is Open, Generous
For those of us who are non-orthodox, and who believe that the Torah is
not utterly immutably divine, but a work written by human beings, divinely
inspired though they may have been at least some of the time, this is not
such a hard question.
March 11, 2007 9:06 AM
Religion in Classroom Doesn't Help Pews
In the UK, religious studies are still- technically at least- taught in
every school, and parents have the right to withdraw their children.
There is also a morning assembly, supposed to be religious in tone (it is by
no means always so) and again parents have the right to withdraw their
children.
April 30, 2007 7:24 AM
To Forgive Each Other is Human
In Jewish teaching, before the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), in the
ten days of penitence running up to it from Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah),
Jews are expected to make their peace with/apologize to/put things right
with those people to whom they have done wrong over the past year.
May 19, 2007 9:11 AM
Still So Much to Do
Once can never be wholly satisfied- nor should one be.
June 5, 2007 6:18 AM
How Do We Keep Faith in Fellow Man?
It's not that it's difficult to keep one's faith in times of war- after
all, war is man-made and the suffering it brings is also man made.
June 11, 2007 5:58 AM
DO Unto Others
As a Jew, there is no doubt. I am not even sure I understand what being
saved means, but I certainly know what doing good works means, and doing
good works, carrying out God's wishes on this earth, is why we are here
in the first place.
The world will only be a better place when we all realize
that actions to improve life for everyone else are what matters, and are
less concerned with our personal well being, or even, dare I say it, our
personal salvation.
June 16, 2007 7:31 AM
An Enlightened Approach to Faith
Questioning one's faith is absolutely essential.
There is a growth- very unattractive and worrying-in a religious position across the faiths that wants to forget the Enlightenment ever happened, and does not believe we should think for ourselves, use our God-given intelligence to work out, question and generally use the evidence from scientific research, to think for ourselves how to interpret the traditional religious views of how we came to be where we are, and what we know about human life and death.
A creative modern approach to religion requires of us to question, discuss, ask, answer, and listen to others. It also requires us to use the knowledge that exists everywhere around the world in all fields of human endeavor both to question our faith and to strengthen it, for only by questioning and testing one's faith can one be sure it is robust and worth defending.
July 13, 2007 10:36 AM
Pray So You Understand
There are some who believe that using the same language as one's forebears for prayer is essential- hence many orthodox Jews pray only in Hebrew- or Aramaic- even though we know that at some stages and in some places bits of the vernacular were used- indeed, Aramaic is a case in point. My view is different.
September 5, 2007 6:52 AM
We All Are Chosen People
My favourite verse- or perhaps verses- are Isaiah chapter 42 verses 6-7.
It's really verse 7 I love:
I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will support you, and set you as a covenant for all peoples, to be a light to the nations, To open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who dwell in darkness out of the dungeon...
September 5, 2007 6:54 AM
Physicians, Heal Others
Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt.
They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons-- e.g. Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere if the patients hold other and differing religious views. To pretend that physicians' own religious views trump those of their patients or wider society is both arrogant and wrong headed.
October 31, 2007 5:23 AM
A Day to Celebrate Superstition?
Halloween seems to me to beg lots of questions, not least the custom of children 'trick or treating' around the streets of London, becoming an increasing nuisance.
For us, it's an American import, and sits uncomfortably with our previously commonplace Guy Fawkes night on November 5, which has a strong anti-Catholic undertone- Guy Fawkes having been one of the so-called Papist plotters of the Gunpowder Plot, who were going to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. On Guy Fawkes (Bonfire) night there are fireworks, a huge bonfire, and a model 'guy' is burned on top of the bonfire, whilst in the weeks before children go around the streets collecting 'a penny for the guy, mister.....'
January 9, 2008 9:18 AM
Choosing to be Among the Chosen
Jewish identity is changing the world over. Traditionally, Jewish status was conferred through the mother- if you had a Jewish mother, you were Jewish. American Reform Judaism established the principle of patirlineality so that the child of a Jewish father, with a Jewish upbringing, was also classed as Jewish by status- but that status was not recognized by orthodox Jews.
With Reform Judaism being such a large component of U.S. Jewry, this has meant that a large proportion of people recognized as Jews by one section of the community are not accepted as such by another -- and yet there are many activities that stretch across the whole gamut of Jewish affiliation in the United States.
March 12, 2008 5:30 AM
You've Got Mail and a Life
The Question: E-mail: Blessing or Curse?
The problem with E-mail is that it does not go away. In some ways, it reminds me of my conscience-it's always there, nagging at me.
May 2, 2008 7:55 AM
Church, State and the British Balance
The question of faith being a private matter looks different from this side of the pond. First, we have an established Church. Second, we have state funded faith schools. Third, we have paid chaplains of a variety of faiths- most, but not all, Christian- in our hospitals and prisons.
