There is no question but that the health care victory marks a turning point in the Obama presidency. Obama can now legitimately present himself as a strong president, a man of principle and genuine achievement, someone who, after Massachusetts, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. With his leadership, the Democratic Party can claim to have remained true to the spirit of its New Deal and populist roots, albeit with a recognition of changing times. Meanwhile the Republicans have once again over-reached, as they did under Gingrich in 1993-1995, and Bush in 2002-2003. Obama’s accomplishment is genuine, and will soon be revealed in the 2010 elections. He now has a record to run on, and the political landscape has shifted tectonically.

Implicit in any conversation about scientism, or its sibling religionism,¹ is an assumption of where the border between science and religion lies. Before I discuss these border crossings (in subsequent blog posts), I would like to propose a precise definition of where this border lies and its ideological consequences.

Fortunately, the work of defining the respective roles of science and religion has already been done, and quite eloquently so, by Stephen Jay Gould, the late evolutionary biologist, in his book Rocks of Ages (1999) and in an online essay here. Professor Gould puts forward a model he calls non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, for the relationship that science and religion have had for much of their shared history, he argues, and ought to continue to have now. Science and religion, he posits, are non-overlapping domains of teaching authority, or magisteria. The magisterium of science encompasses “the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory),” whereas the magisterium of religion “extends over questions of moral meaning and value.”

Essential to NOMA is the notion that science and religion ought to act as entirely separate domains – a difficult idea for some to accept, yet essential for any discussion of scientism and religionism.

It all seemed to start when Vice-President Biden, in Israel to promote the “peace process”, was greeted with the announcement of further Israeli expansion into the historically Palestinian Ramat Shlomo, in East Jerusalem. The US fired back on all cylinders, with Biden, Clinton, and General Petraeus questioning Israel in an unprecedented way. In return, the Jerusalem Post accused Obama of “repeatedly humiliating our prime minister.” And since he’s critical of Israel, Obama must be (according to Hagai Ben-Artzi, Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, anyway) an anti-Semite. The dust was still thick in the air, as American leaders made it clear that they loved Israel, it’s just the actions of the Israeli government with which they have difficulty.

If you’re like me, you stayed glued to your computer Sunday watching every last hurled insult and suspenseful motion to recommit. You had trouble understanding why a faceless Republican (who was eventually discovered to be Randy Neugebauer from Lubbock, TX) called Stupak a “baby killer” and why Dems seemed happy Stupak’s motion had passed.

If you were like me, you were engaged in life’s other duties for several hours, didn’t know Stupak had reached an agreement with the President and had no idea that his motion to recommit (or whatever) was actually a motion to bring HCR to the floor for a vote.

You eventually exulted with the Democrats and thumbed your noses at sulking Repubs without being quite sure exactly what had happened. Parliamentary procedure is a labyrinthian sport.

Sunday was historic. The bill that eventually passed without a single Republican vote was a Republican bill in many ways, modeled after Mitt Romney’s public-private Massachusetts hybrid. It was not the government takeover I had hoped for. In fact, as many have noted, the bill mandates that all Americans purchase private policies without providing us the option of publicly offered insurance. So why are some packs of teabaggers waving signs threatening Representatives with gun violence over health care reform while others hurl racial or homophobic epithets at Congressmen?

Mike Godbe, a young American on a free Birthright tour of Israel, continues his diary and photos of the tour, reporting his experiences and the ways the tour staff present the history and politics of the country. Earlier posts from Mt. Herzl, Jerusalem, a kibbutz, and Caesaria can be accessed by clicking the corresponding links.

Monday, March 15th, 2010
I woke up at 4:45 this morning for an optional sunrise hike to the top of a nearby ridge. It is noticeably drier here in the south than in other parts of Israel we have been. As soon as the dusk started to light up the land, I looked on the ground and found it to be full of empty shells from desert snails about 3cm wide – literally there was one of these shells on the ground about every six inches. The desert is actually covered in small green plants in many parts now . . . It only lasts a few weeks and we happened to catch it. Right after winter rains and before the summer heat gets too intense.

This I like, from Jane Hamsher at FireDogLake:

Congress passed its health insurance reform bill last night. It’s an admirable first step, but the task of providing affordable health care to every American is still before us.

This week, the Senate will pass a series of fixes to the bill. This is the moment for a leader in the Senate to make the first step towards actual health care reform: putting the public option up for a vote.

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado led others in the Senate in showing that a public option can pass. Now it’s up to Bennet to show it he’s a real leader and force a vote on the public option.

More than 22,000 people have already signed our petition to Michael Bennet to force a vote on the public option. We’re going to deliver the petition to his office in Denver on Wednesday. Can you add your name now?

Click here to tell Michael Bennet to show leadership and put the public option up for a vote. Sign our petition now.

Senator Michael Bennet led the fight to, in his words, “save the public option.” Bennet said adding a public option will make health reform “far more effective” in providing “real choices for working families” who need health insurance. Bennet concluded, “we need to take the final step to include a public option.”

Health care reform is finally in the works. What now? I say it’s OK to celebrate partial victories, even while acknowledging what has yet to be accomplished. So let’s celebrate this one! … AND … it’s also OK to acknowledge that this bill does not represent most of what we really want.

The House passes health reform on March 21. Photo courtesy of Monique Cala from FlickrCC/talkradionews.

The National Coalition on Health Care fought hard for a more extensive health care program than has been passed, yet joins with most progressives in celebrating what was accomplished in the Congress so far. Like Social Security and Medicare, the first steps toward serious reform are always limited, but are then later expanded in good ways. Here are some highlights from the National Coalition on Health Care’s statement on how, upon enactment, the health reform bills passed yesterday by the House will move the United States toward accomplishing five major health reform goals:

Classroom in Afghanistan where boys and girls would learn together, with a curriculum emphasizing peacemaking

One of my favorite things to do is wander around a school and see how teachers and students have decorated their classrooms. Beyond the basic academic stuff like maps, history charts, word drills, homework assignments, art projects, etc… many classrooms also have posters talking about how everyone should treat each other, character messages, encouragement to work hard and reach out when help is needed. The picture on the left is from my visit to Afghanistan. It was an amazing school that had a central theme of peacemaking in its curriculum. On Saturday March 20th 2010, I got to poke around inside a Muslim children’s school much closer to home in Santa Clara California and was thrilled with what I saw there.

In terms of news, this is old: five days already! And the health care bill just passed the House, which is what this group of nuns wanted to happen, so why mention them?

But in terms of the annals of courage, this is big. Now that the bill has passed the House, and for whatever reasons (like giving in to Stupak) and with whatever results, let us celebrate these women. From the On Faith blog last Wednesday:

Hard to say which men will find this more troubling, U.S. Catholic bishops or Glenn Beck, but a “social justice” coalition representing 59,000 U.S. Catholic sisters sent a letter to Members of Congress Wednesday urging them to pass the Senate’s health care bill.

The letter was a direct challenge to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which supports health-care reform but opposes the Senate’s version. As three bishops wrote for On Faith this week, the Senate bill “extends abortion coverage, allows federal funds to pay for elective abortions and denies adequate conscience protection to individuals and institutions.”

Poppycock, say the sisters. “Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.”

Peta Poole (left) and Jim Sweeney of Greenbrae prepare the garden at Gough and Eddy streets. Photo: Kat Wade / Special to The Chronicle

A San Francisco lot that once held a Lutheran church, which burned down in 1995, and has been a wasteland since then, is now being turned into an urban farm by volunteers. The group leader is a man named Tree.

“Doing things for free encourages people to share,” Tree said. “It encourages people to be community, to be family. It provides people the chance to be generous with each other.”

Tree first put his proverbial money where his mouth is in 2008, when he opened the original Free Farm Stand in his Mission neighborhood at 23rd and Treat streets. Relying on donations for supplies and elbow-grease from volunteers, by his count, he’s since grown and given away more than 6,000 pounds of food on Sunday mornings…

Tree has a salt-and-pepper beard (mostly salt), a diminutive frame, but the thick and soiled hands of a lifetime gardener. He declined to share his birth name because “this story is not about me.”

We are seeking to build a resource center for spiritually alive practices to support the growing spiritual renewal of ancient traditions in frameworks that emphasize universal themes and a commitment to love, justice, caring for each other and for the planet. We are looking for readings or rituals that make traditional religious holidays come alive, so that others can access them — on our website here. We welcome you to submit to us your own article giving guidance to people within your tradition about how to make any particular holiday become spiritually deeper and accessible to a contemporary spiritual progressive who might be having difficulty with traditional understandings or rituals connected to that holiday. We invite submissions for any holiday celebrated by any of the religions we have listed on that page.

To give you an example of what we mean, we urge you to look at our Passover Seder Supplement for 2010. In this case, we are not changing the actual practices, but giving a set of new readings to go along with and supplement the tradtional practices.

Similarly, we invite you to look at the readings we’ve assembled for Easter.

In each case, you can see how approaching the holidays from within the frameworks suggested might give new life and meaning to these holidays.

Our deeply beloved ally Rabbi Arthur Waskow has important insights into contemporary culture that should be read by everyone!

The film AVATAR weaves together what we usually call the spiritual and the political. Indeed, whether its director realized it consciously or not, AVATAR echoes two major strands of religious wisdom that began in Jewish thought but have had deep influence on cultures far beyond the boundaries of Jewish peoplehood. The two strands of ancient wisdom are “archetypal” — that is, they appear over and over again in human thought because they arise in human experience and yearning — with or without conscious transmission of the stories.One is the biblical story of the Exodus from slavery under Pharaoh (rooted in the Spirit but notably political) ; the other, the Kabbalistic metaphor of God as the Tree of Life, unfolding through successive emanations from the Infinite to the Incarnate so that its roots are in Heaven and its fruit is our world. This wisdom is notably “spiritual,” but has as its roots a political vision of sharing food among the whole community, and sharing God’s abundance with all living beings.

Both these great myths, interestingly, are encoded in Festival Seders — sacred meals that actually embody in earthy ways, through what we eat and drink, the sublime meaning of each festival.

The Exodus story and its Passover Seder is the better-known (though Kabbalah began already in the Middle Ages to seep into Christian and Muslim mysticism). Both archetypal tales echo in the “AVATAR” film when all the life-forms of the planet-moon Pandora, including but not only the quasi-human blue-skinned people who call themselves the Na’vi (in Hebrew this word means “Prophet”) rise up against the tyrannical power of a rapacious Earthian corporation backed by a hyper-mechanized invading mercenary army made up of ex-Marines.

The rest is here.

People who spend more of their day having substantive discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier, a new study found.

The New York Times reports:

“We found this so interesting, because it could have gone the other way — it could have been, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ — as long as you surf on the shallow level of life you’re happy, and if you go into the existential depths you’ll be unhappy,” Dr. Mehl said.

But, he proposed, substantive conversation seemed to hold the key to happiness for two main reasons: both because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people.

So as I write the House just approved the health care bill, and we could have a deep discussion about whether this was a good or bad thing — and we have gone into this from both sides on Tikkun Daily: e.g. Eli Zaretsky here:

Mike Godbe, a young American on a free Birthright tour of Israel, continues his diary and photos of the tour, reporting his experiences and the ways the tour staff present the history and politics of the country. Earlier posts from Jerusalem, a kibbutz, and Caesaria can be accessed by clicking the corresponding links.

Sunday, March 14th, 2010
Today we met the six IDF soldiers that will be joining our group for the remaining five days of the program. All of them are between the ages of 19 and 21, half women, half men. When birthright was started around 2000, participants in the program were not allowed to walk through many parts of Jerusalem or go out at night, like we now are, because of the high level of danger during the second intifada. We are told that the IDF “encounters” program was incorporated into birthright to allow participants to meet and interact with Israeli citizens . . . The implication being that the soldiers were here to provide that connection between participants and Israelis, not participants and the Israeli military.

We played some name games and ice breakers in the morning, the soldiers still in full military garb (no guns). We then got ready for a somber day at Yad Vashem and Mt. Herzl Cemetery, the Holocaust museum / memorial and the burying place of nearly every prominent Israeli statesmen and soldier – among many others of lesser fame.

A friend told me a story about visiting her son during his first semester of college. She took him to dinner (a chance to eat something other than cafeteria food) and sat across from him, eager to hear how school was going. After looking at the menu, she looked up to see his head hanging down across the table. “Oh, what’s wrong honey?” she asked with motherly concern. “Nothing, Mom,” he said looking up. “I’m just texting a friend under the table.”

Technology worries me sometimes, not because I don’t like to stay connected but because I, like my friend’s son, am easily distracted. Still, another friend convinced me last year to join Facebook, and I blog here and elsewhere occasionally because a conversation is happening. And conversations matter. Because people matter, and all we really have to connect us is words. My friend who coaxed me onto Facebook likes to say, “All communication media can help relationships, but none can replace face time.” I think he’s right. We can keep up with one another online. We can even learn from what others are thinking elsewhere. But every once in a while, we need to get together. There’s no replacement for face-time.

Which is why I want to invite folks to join me for the second annual Duke Divinity School Summer Institute here in my home town, Durham, NC, May 31-June 5. Our theme is “Reconciliation in a Divided World,” and many of the folks whose blogs and books I like to read will be gathering again to eat and worship together, to listen to reflections from elders like John Perkins, Mary Nelson, and Virgilio Elizondo in morning plenary sessions, and to get down to the nuts and bolts of our daily tasks in afternoon workshops on Jesus and Justice, Racial Reconciliation in Congregations, Global Poverty, Community Development, Institutional Leadership, the Arts and Creation Care. I’m delighted to be teaching a workshop with Mary Nelson on Building Beloved Community.

I’m posting this today because the organizers of the conference tell me that scholarships for this time together are available–but only until April 9th. I don’t want anyone to miss the chance for the face time that helps us move from words and ideas to relationships and a movement–God’s movement to reconcile all things.

On Sunday, March 21, 2010, a diverse coalition of veterans, scholars, and faith leaders will hold a public hearing for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War, bringing the public an opportunity for lament and interfaith dialogue on moral conscience in the military. Testifiers will offer their stories and expert testimonies on the issues of conscience facing U.S. service members in war and a group of commissioners will reflect on their contributions in order to promote further dialogue and advocacy.

The public hearing of the Truth Commission will open up a national interfaith dialogue on the moral decisions that each military service member faces. Held at the historic Riverside Church in New York City, the public hearing begins at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday and is free and open to the public.

Founder of Faith Voices for the Common Good and long-time anti-war activist, Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock has dedicated much of her scholarship and activism to inter-religious education. As chair of the planning team for the Truth Commission on Conscience in War, to be launched this Sunday, March 21 in New York City, she has turned her attention to Conscientious Objection regulations and the realities of military service during times of war.

To create the Truth Commission, Brock has worked with the filmmakers behind “Soldiers of Conscience,” an Emmy-winning documentary film that follows several soldiers through their moral decision-making on whether to fight in the war in Iraq or apply to be Conscientious Objectors. In her piece, “Moral Conscience in War: Small Acts of Repair,” Brock tells the stories of her father’s US Army service, including two tours in Vietnam. She explains how her father’s stories and the influence of veterans she has grown to respect have shown her how opportunities for repair and healing during war can come in many sizes.

Moral Conscience In War: Small Acts Of Repair

By Rita Nakashima Brock

My father Roy, from rural Mississippi, was barely 18 and had an eighth grade education when he joined the U.S. Army in 1941. He was captured in North Africa and spent the rest of the war as a POW. A career enlisted man, he served two tours in Vietnam as a medic who ran a battlefield aide station.

In the days before cell phones and email, my father sent us cassette tapes and letters. As the oldest child of three, I received my own tape.

Christopher Hitchens critiques the Ten Commandments and updates them for the 21st century. What do you think? What would your Ten Commandments look like?

Truth is an essential component of peace and of peacemaking because it is necessary to the establishment of justice.  No justice; no peace.  On Sunday, March 21, a group of some 80 commissioners will hear testimony on conscientious objection in war.  The public session will be held at The Riverside Church in New York City beginning at 4 p.m.   I am one of the commissioners. (http://www.conscienceinwar.org/)

Meet your favorite author! Every Monday night I interview a Tikkun author on a conference call that you can join, and you can ask questions and make your own comments: half radio show, half virtual town meeting.

It’s free to you, but we ask on the honor system that if you join the call more than once that you do something to keep us going financially: subscribe to the magazine, join the Network of Spiritual Progressives (which includes a subscription) or donate. These three are the ONLY ways we have of surviving. But of course when you listen to this audio on the web it’s free to you and at no cost to us, so you can squeak by without feeling guilty that you haven’t contributed… or you could contribute anyway for the sheer joy of it.

There is some wonderful stuff on these weekly calls. You can download MP3s for your ipod or listen on your computer. All the past audio is saved here. We had a backlog after our last intern (the wonderful Daniel O’Leary) left, and now two volunteers have come forward to do the editing of the audio and conversion to MP3s (the most wonderful Jeff Moskin and Jack Lampl), and they have cleared the backlog.

So now you can hear all these great people. This last Monday, for example, Tikkun Daily’s Lauren Reichelt gave one of the very best of these interviews. It’s one thing to read her stunning article in Tikkun about community organizing, and another to hear her talk about it with such clarity and enthusiasm. If you wondered whether your vote for Obama had helped anyone or not, listen to Lauren tell how totally the new administration has turned around her work of providing health care to a low income county in New Mexico that is as large as Massachusetts and in which most people have no health insurance. Under Bush she kept a low profile and started blogging incognito lest she draw attention to herself and lose more for her district faster (her description reminded me of how dissidents in the old Soviet Union wrote samizdat); under Obama she has developed strong relationships with the administration and is writing openly under her own name. Links are in the first paragraph below.

Sending me the edited version of Lauren’s call, our volunteer just wrote “Very interesting and inspiring. Will be sending the link to a few colleagues.”

Here’s everyone from this year: