Author: Andrew Sullivan

“Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force. Often it seems that God does not exist: all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history. Values always tend to reappear under new guises, and human beings have arisen time after time from situations that seemed doomed. Such is the power of the resurrection, and all who evangelize are instruments of that power,” – Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel.

David E. Campbell, the co-author, with Robert Putnam, of the in-depth study of religion’s place in America’s social fabric, American Grace, reveals a twist to the trope that believers are more charitable than the non-religious:

Having found that religion and charity go hand-in-hand, Robert Putnam and I sought to understand why.  The answer might surprise you. We initially thought that religious beliefs must foster a sense of charity—whether inspiration from biblical stories like the Good Samaritan or, perhaps, a fear of God’s judgment for not acting charitably. However, we could find no evidence linking people’s theological beliefs and their rate of giving—which also helps to explain why the “religion effect” varies little across different religions. The rates for charitable giving according to the Jumpstart survey are: 61 percent of Black Protestants; 64 % of Evangelical Protestants; 67 % of Mainline Protestants, 68 % of Roman Catholics, and 76 % of Jews. By contrast, only 46 % of the not religiously affiliated made any charitable giving.

Rather than religious beliefs, we found that the “secret ingredient” for charitable giving among religious Americans is the social networks formed within religious congregations. The more friends someone has within a religious congregation, the more likely that person is to give time, money, or both, to charitable causes. In fact, even non-religious people who have friends within a religious congregation (typically, because their spouse is a believer) are highly charitable—more so than strong believers who have few social ties within a congregation. Our findings thus suggest that if secular organizations could replicate the sort of tight, interlocking friendship networks found within religious organizations, they too would spur a comparable level of charitable giving.

It’s “The Whole Booke of Psalmes,” or the Bay Psalm Book:

Translated directly from Hebrew into English, the Bay Psalm Book was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640, less than twenty years after the Mayflower left Plymouth, England. It was the first book printed on the Puritan minister Joseph Glover’s press, the first such device to make the journey across the Atlantic. Although Glover died during the 1638 crossing, his widow, Elizabeth, inherited the press and saw to its installation. She established America’s first print shop in a little house on what is now Holyoke Street in Cambridge. …

One can scrutinize every verse of the Bay Psalm Book online. The text rewards such study, but it does not explain why the first book printed in America was a Psalter. Psalters are an unfamiliar genre for many, even those who worship regularly. Psalm-singing had for centuries been the demesne of a hand-picked choir, but the English Reformation invited the voices of the entire congregation. This printing of the Psalms in verse, set to meter, allowed them to be sung by all. Thus the Bay Psalm Book is a kind of hymnal. … America’s history spans just a few centuries, but hundreds of hymnals. Colonists came seeking religious freedom, so the first book they printed was not a political tract or even a Bible, but a hymnal: a book to be used regularly in communal and even private worship.

(Image of title page from the Bay Psalm Book via Wikimedia Commons)

Thinking through the function of religious rituals, Dreher grapples with what he’s learned from repeating the sacrament of confession again and again:

I’ve found over the years that eventually I get tired of bringing the same damn thing to my confessor, and that sense of accountability provides a nudge to try harder not to do the damn thing. Most of us have a tendency to hide from ourselves — to rationalize and to avoid. Once you get into the habit of confession, and the habit of mind that confession creates in you, it becomes a lot harder to hide from yourself. Some of us struggle with scrupulosity — that is, an unbalanced preoccupation with our sins. I can’t say I was ever scrupulous, strictly speaking — I’m far too lazy for that — but when I was a pious young teenager, I would pray often for specific sins to be forgiven, but never really could be sure that I was forgiven. The rite of confession, I learned later in life, gave me a sense of security in knowing that my sins had been forgiven. Somehow, I needed to hear it from a priest: “Go, your sins are forgiven.” There’s life-giving power in that.

I can’t imagine an atheist version of confession. What would it look like? How would it work, if you don’t think there’s any such thing as sin? What standards would you use to measure whether or not one had missed the mark? If you see no man (or woman) with actual spiritual authority over you, or at least as the channel of real supernatural grace, how would the ritual work to relieve the psychological burden? Of course there is a secular version of examination of conscience in the presence of a trained professional; it’s called therapy. But it’s not really the same thing as confession, as Rabbi Rieff explained to us all. Confession is about helping you achieve sanctity; therapy is about easing anxiety about your condition, which might entail changing your behavior, or might not.

Previous Dish on the subject here.