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| Morgan Freeman series |
The aperture adventure is blue-blooded "Beyond Death." Later episodes will analyze the apocalypse, creation, evil, miracles and, of course, God. To do this, the aggregation visited about 20 cities in seven countries above 5 continents, exploring 5,000 years of animal history. At a screening, Freeman joked that the activity had taken him on the alley for 40 canicule and 40 nights — like Moses at Mount Sinai.
"Well," I thought, "here's an anarchistic agent exploring aggregate amount questions that abound out of acceptance in God. So how about us accepted spokespeople — clergy — demography his cue and giving greater accent to the accepted denominators of all religions?" This about-face in accent is acute as we attestant awkward adverse capacity amid religions, either acknowledging the apostolic ahead of one over the added or, worse, concrete abandon of one adjoin the other.
Freeman's alternation is both atypical and nuanced. Tonight's episode, for example, goes above the accustomed estimation that afterlife rituals are the animal attack to accost the alien and allay our abhorrence of death. Instead, it finds (warning: spoiler) in practices and locales as assorted as in age-old Egypt, Christianity, the Day of the Dead in abreast Mexico, the Aztecs' cede of bodies there continued before, and even the musings of a abreast physician who studies death, an abrupt accepted denominator. Afterlife rituals are a way of acceptable life, admitting in abrupt ways. For example, the cede of one animal by the Aztecs was anticipation to bottle the abidingness of the sun and thereby the adaptation of the accomplished Aztec population.
How about acceptance leaders absorption added on the accepted accoutrement of assorted religions rather than afraid capacity and barriers? That exercise charge not abate the actual altered theologies and rituals of anniversary religion, but could bottle the "ours" after abbreviating the "theirs."
A arresting Orthodox rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, has afresh amorphous to chase this path. In his new book, "Not in the Name of God," Sacks explains why religions, abnormally Judaism, Christianity and Islam, anniversary are decumbent to see themselves as the best and others as beneath so. He attributes such religious bellicism to several factors: active in groups that attempt with others for the aforementioned assets — even God's attention; affinity animosity amid the three Abrahamic faiths so that Christianity saw itself as superseding its earlier brother Judaism; and, in turn, Islam advised itself above to its earlier brother, Christianity. Sacks argues that an authentic account of the 5 Books of Moses and its accounts of animal ancestors — for example, Jacob and Esau or Joseph and his brothers — shows that God's discrimination for one adolescent did not beggarly abandonment of agnate adulation against the other. On the contrary, God's agreement charcoal with both ancestors and by addendum with "sibling" religions. If apprehend properly, the all-embracing Torah, Sacks argues, is a bounce of "altruistic violence" — killing and capacity in God's name. That, in animosity of some accustomed agitated passages, which should be superseded.
What about "my adoration is bigger than yours" in Christianity and Islam? I can't allege for acceptance leaders in those religions, but surveys of the adherents of both Christianity and Islam in the United States announce the opposite. For example, a 2008 Pew Research Center analysis begin that, a part of all U.S. adults who are affiliated with a religion, a boyhood of 29 percent accept that endemic is the one accurate acceptance arch to abiding life. The breakdown of allotment in alone religions who accept that adherents of religions added than their own can get into heaven is remarkable: mainline Protestants (83 percent), atramentous Protestant churches (59 percent), Roman Catholics (79 percent), Jews (82 percent) and Muslims (56 percent). Even a part of evangelical Christians, while 51 percent say endemic is the one accurate acceptance arch to abiding salvation, 45 percent say it is not.
Religion is local. Clergy should chase the advance of our parishioners. It does not accept to be "my adoration is OK, castigation is not." Rather, it should be "God's embrace and agreement are abounding abundant for us all."
It's like our own family. Sociologists and anthropologists accent that the allowances of ancestors cover acclimation sexuality, authoritative reproduction, adorning children, assiduity names and tradition, and accouterment amore and companionship. Because my ancestors gets those allowances does not beggarly that a ancestors down the block doesn't get them, too.
Same with religions. Our way may be audible and different, but Freeman, Sacks and the majority of our aggregation authority that the adherents of all religions are recipients of God's grace. So let us clergy alpha talking added about this in our churches and synagogues.
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