John H Armstrong

New Blog Site Soon

Over the course of the next 24-72 hours a mentor/coach is finishing the design for my new blog site. It will be on a WordPress platform hosted by a different server than the one I have used for over seven years. Please check back in a few days and let me know what you think when this site is launched. I will be doing a series of blog posts on the extremely important new book, Bad Relgion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat (Free Press: New York, 2012) over the next several weeks. I really hope that you will read these posts and interact with me as you do. I believe this is one of the most important books for missional-ecumenists I have read. 

The Tragedy of Syria: Christians in the Crossfire

If you watch or follow American news, from the left or the right, you hear continual calls for our government, working with the United Nations, to engage militarily with the Syrian government in support of the rebels in that nation. I submit that the simple view held by the vast majority of Syria's Christians is very different from what we hear day-to-day. Their message is: "Please stay out!" Why? After all, some Christians have died in the present cycle of extreme violence. And this uprising is now nearly a year old. The images we generally see are of government oppression and open attacks on rebels that defy imagination. 

As with Iraq so it now is with Syria. If the secular government is removed the end result will likely be much worse for minorities, especially for Christian minorities. Syria's religions are as follows: 74% Sunni Muslims, 13% other Muslims, 10% Christian and 3% Druze. President Bashar Assad, an autocratic leader for sure, leads a secular government. If he is removed the result would likely be a Sunni Muslim government that would be extremely unfavorable to minorities. Those Syrians I have spoken with tell me that Sunni Muslims, Christians and the Alawite community, a small offshoot of Shiite Islam, are all under threat if this present government falls. (Interestingly, the Russians and the Chinese are keeping the UN out of Syria right now. Their reason seems to be entirely based on a "balance of power" position in the Middle East!)

Like Saddam Hussein was in Iraq, Bashar Assad is an oppressive ruler. But if the West supports an "Arab Spring" the results will very likely be much like those we've seen in Egypt and Tunisia. A dentist, under anonymity, said, "Of course the Arab Spring is an Islamist movement. It's full of extremists. They want to destroy our country, and they call it a 'revolution'."

Syria's Christians date their origins to Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. Church leaders in Syria have generally aligned themselves with the government urging their followers to give Assad a chance to enact a long-promised political overhaul while also calling for an end to the present violence.

Ignatius IV, patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, described Syria as an oasis of religious tolerance where Christians can worship freely, build sanctuaries and run schools, activities that are restricted to varying degrees in almost every other Middle Eastern country. Christian ministers are often shown on television in Syria taking part in joint prayer services for peace with Muslim clerics. And the defense minister of Syria is openly Christian! The patriarch actually displays a photograph of himself with President Assad on his wall. I find the same response among Syrian Orthodox Christians in the United States. 

Do not misunderstand my point. Christians have died in Syria. Things have been terrible over there the past twelve months. But recent reports from Syria suggest the rebels are as violent and aggressive as the government troops. Rebels are acting more and more like the Assad regime according to many Christians. The truth is that Christians in Syria have little or no confidence in a successful revolution. The ones I have spoken with tell me to urge Americans to stay out of this situation. It took me some time to realize why but now I think that I understand their reasons. When we removed Saddam we celebrated but the church in Iraq began a whole new period of history. Many Christians have died, churches have been bombed and most Christians have fled Iraq now, many into neighboring Syria. 

While we may think these Middle Eastern uprisings are a good thing the fact is that most of them lead to great suffering for our brothers and sisters. Perhaps we should make this a higher priority than America's own political agenda in the world. I, for one, think the church transcends military operations. I hope our government will listen to the Christians of Syria, and other minorities, and stay out. I also pray for the peace of Syria, especially for my suffering brothers and sisters there. Many of these people are wonderful Christians with deep faith in God and profound love for their homeland. Syria is a gorgeous country with friendly people. It may not be a just democracy but it is not an evil empire either. 

One of my frequent themes on this blog is global Christian mission. If we are to practice a truly global faith, and not simply an Americanized version of Christianity, we should pray for the church in Syria and then work for peace. This seems to be at the core of what it means to faithfully follow Jesus in the modern world. 

A Canadian Leader Who Models Christian Grace in Leadership

A Canadian Christian friend recently introduced me to the head of state in his province by sharing an email link. I thus learned about a remarkable politician named Brad Wall. Wall was elected Premier of Saskatchewan in the November 2007 provincial election. 

Since that election, the Wall's leadership of the government can point to a remarkable list of achievements, including;  

- Three balanced budgets; 
- The largest tax cuts in the history of Saskatchewan; 
- Cutting the province's debt by almost 40 per cent; 
- Record infrastructure spending to improve roads, schools and senior's facilities all across Saskatchewan and providing more affordable housing for those with lower incomes.

Prior to his career in politics, Premier Wall was active in his local business community and was involved in service work spanning local events, economic development and health care recruitment.

One of his earliest forays into politics was in the late 1980's as a founding member and western co-chair of the Alliance for the Future of Young Canadians. This was an organization dedicated to promoting free trade.

Brad Wall was born and raised in Swift Current, which is in Saskatchewan's south-west.  He still lives there with his wife, Tami as well as their three children: Megan, Colter and Faith.  And because of them, he tries to get home most nights, even though it's a two hour drive from Saskatchewan's capital-Regina.  He also enjoys coaching minor football in his hometown.

Here is the premier's Christmas greetings to his people. This is an amazing balance of faith and leadership in a time when we are learning how to live in the public sector where Christendom no longer dominates the culture. God bless Premier Wall.  

 

The Growing Reality of Interfaith Activity

A recent Hartford Institute study indicates an increase in connections across all faith traditions, especially among more civic-oriented communities. Since the 9/11 attacks, congregations have gotten more involved in interfaith work and are cooperating more for the social good of their communities. In the past decade, American congregations' involvement in interfaith worship doubled and their involvement in interfaith community service nearly tripled. Although interfaith work has increased in both evangelical and oldline churches, the most liberal congregations have the highest level of this activity. 

Older evangelicals have a very difficult time thinking about interfaith dialog and practice. Their categories are totally black and white. You are for Christ or for the devil. This is spiritual war and we must choose sides. We cannot serve God and Satan so we cannot have discussions with non-Christians unless they are evangelistic conversations. We must remind people, as soon as possible, that they are going to hell unless they convert to our faith in Jesus.  

I have clearly overstated the case here for a reason. Even if my words are not entirely accurate they are too close to reality for comfort. 

What is the problem here? 

1. We have failed to see that the term "brothers and sisters" has several different meanings in the Bible and tradition. Clearly, the New Testament speaks of "brothers and sisters" primarily in terms of those who are one with us in Christ. But there is more nuance to this issue than some will allow. We are plainly related to one another as members of the same human family, created by the same God and loved by the same Creator who sent his one and only Son into the world to save us. He did not send the Savior into the world "to condemn the world" (John 3:16-17) as the Fourth Gospel makes so plain. 

We are all created by God thus none of us exists independently from God. "We live and move and have our being in God." Ontologically we are all brothers and sisters who are coming forth from God here and now as a divine creative act. This is why St. Francis could speak of "brother sun and sister moon." Evangelicals have often lost this robust doctrine as it is expressed in the first article of the creed.

2. We have far too often assumed that if we talk to non-Christians about matters of God and faith then we must talk to them in an aggressive way about our faith or we have failed to take evangelism seriously. I find this premise entirely wrong. It seems to me that it is like saying, "The only way we can and should talk to people of non-Christian persuasion is if we can talk about their need to convert and join us." Surely we can have loving and wonderful conversation with people as real friends and neighbors without that conversation leading us to "present the plan of salvation" as our only purpose for a relationship. 

3. We need to read our Bibles much more carefully if we are to enter into the growing interfaith reality. I recently engaged several serious Christian thinkers about this subject because of a simple re-reading of the parables of Jesus. I am quite aware that judgment is a biblical theme. I take this quite seriously. But I am also aware that Jesus revealed the Father's love for the world. He did not reserve his love for the "right" crowd. In fact the one crowd that he most frequently warned of impending danger was the conservative religious crowd that was most sure they knew who belonged to the true people of God and who did not. 

So what needs to happen? We need to stop reacting against liberal conceptions of "the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God." These conceptions were false and remain dangerous if advanced without the clarity of the good news. But what we replaced this danger with was a theology of anger and judgment that left us with precious little to say to non-Christians but "repent" and "you are headed to hell without Jesus." If you think I make this up talk to non-Christian under age 40! I believe deeply in repentance but I do not believe that I can even begin to communicate why a God of love commands all people everywhere to repent unless people know I love them. People do not care what I love unless they know I love them. And they cannot know I love them if I will not converse with them out of deep human respect precisely because they are loved by the living and true God whose love I have found in Jesus Christ. 

The Increase of Other Faiths and the Future

Kevin M. Schultz, in his insightful social history of religion in modern America, notes that “a final factor changing America’s religious sociology, one that has yet to supplant the liberal-conservative divide, has been an increase in the number of faiths practiced in the United States. Changes in immigration law since 1965 have allowed a variety of new immigrant populations to come to the United States, especially from Asia, Africa and Latin America” (Tri-Faith America, 202). Each of these new immigrants brings with them their own religious traditions. These include Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and many, many more. These simple facts make it increasingly difficult to talk about a “Judeo-Christian” America. President Obama, in a April 2009 statement at a press conference in Turkey said that the United States did not consider itself “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens bound by ideals and a set of values” (cited in Tri-Faith America, 202).

Now it seems quite obvious to me that the president is right. Only religious conservatives, and those of a certain ideology for that matter, can still speak of a “Judeo-Christian” America. The truth is clear—it does not exist! It did exist, at least as a Protestant America, and then as an America of liberals and conservatives who defined the country by their version of faith. But it does not exist any longer.

As this “tri-faith” religious context evolved it is not surprising, adds Schultz, that many Catholics and Jews felt less compelled to retain their religious identities, Adds Schultz, “Success and acceptance had bred indifference” (Tri-Faith America, 203). To give but one example, Fr. Andrew Greeley’s sociological studies have shown that Catholics have used the post-war years to achieve economic, educational and social parity with white Protestants. By the 1960s Catholics were more likely to go to college than white Protestants. This was a huge social shift. The sense of prejudice that existed between Catholics and Protestants was almost gone by the last few decades of the twentieth century. Who cannot genuinely celebrate this social and religious change?

Jews were succeeding as well. By the early 1960s Jews could hold most prominent positions in society and education that had previously been closed to them.  The number of political leaders who were Jewish increased dramatically and major corporate leaders in America were Jewish by the 1970s and beyond. Today it makes little or no difference if you are a Jew in most parts of American society.

But both Jews and Catholics now face their own “identity crisis.” This is often discussed within their own communities. I have discussed this with Catholic bishops and priest as well as Jewish rabbis. Take Catholics as one example. Prior to the modern era part of Catholic identity was nourished by a certain antipathy towards Protestants and Protestantism. This prompts Catholic writers to wonder if Catholicism in America has “sufficient inner resources to survive and flourish” (Daniel Callahan, cited by Schultz, 206) despite the positive changes in culture. The jury is out on this question as Catholics, just like Protestants, are losing members faster than they can retain them. Another Catholic writer, Francis Canavan, questioned Callahan by saying this new situation had given Catholics a “new pluralism” that was decidedly opposed to their faith and church (quoted by Schultz, 207). What is the future of Catholic identity in a pluralist (and secularized) American context?

Honestly, this last question (about Catholic identity in a pluralist and secularized context) should be asked of all Christians and Jews in America?

Tomorrow: How Shall We Deal with Our Identity Crisis?

How Shall We Deal with Our Religious Identity Crisis?

The success of what Professor Ken M. Schultz has called “tri-faith America” there remain problems. One is the identity crisis I wrote about yesterday. Catholics and Protestants are no longer sure why they are Catholic or Protestant, at least to a significant degree. Few understand the theological debates and most do not live in the tensions of the past. How do Catholic and Protestant institutions self-identify when they have been so successful that they are losing their way? This question is as old as antiquity if you know the Old Testament.

The religious right has posed serious opposition to this new version of public expression Schultz calls “tri-faith.” But, he rightly concludes, “the success of the tri-faith idea shaped American life during the second half of the twentieth century and has continued to do so well into the twenty-first” (Tri-Faith America, 208).

This new public expression of faith in America helped to formulate new principles of group communalism, group rights, and religious privacy. While some conservatives debate the ultimate value of these principles I am one that welcomes them as a better way than that of our pre-civil rights past. Schultz notes, “It helped usher in the second disestablishment of religion in the United States, which still stands as the law of the land” (Tri-Faith America, 208). While this may be despised by some who long with nostalgia for an older America I believe it is the fruit, generally speaking, of our best ideals and principles as a people.

The tri-faith movement also “softened the ground for the civil rights movement” (Tri-Faith America, 208). This set the terms for all future debate about American diversity. This changed the landscape for women, homosexuals and others who have been socially and politically marginalized in various ways in America’s Protestant past. With this change the church now faces major concerns. Who are we? What makes us distinct? How do we become inclusive without losing our way morally and spiritually?

It is here that I end this brief series of comments about America and the role of religion in our public life. What is the role of missional-ecumenism in tri-faith America? I believe it is the only appropriate response to this change given the great mission field which is now America. American Christendom is dying, if not dead. How will we pursue the kingdom of God in America when America is no longer closely linked with that kingdom in the perception of most people? This is the question that gets me up in the morning and drives me to teach what I call missional-ecumenism. America is not going back to what it was. I, for one, am grateful. The question really is clear: “What is our role as Christians (not as Protestants or Catholics first) in this new context?”

Putting America’s Religious Change Into Perspective

Yesterday I gave a few observations about a new book, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (Oxford, 2011). Author Kevin M. Schultz has done a major new analysis, as well as a critical update, of the thesis religious sociologist Will Herberg wrote on the impact of religion upon American culture.

Schultz demonstrates that religious pluralism and civic secularism were increasingly being wed before and after World War II. By 1962, when the Supreme Court outlawed prayer in public schools, Protestantism, and religion in general, was being disestablished in American life. This decision formalized that which had already been taking place for decades. Following this decision very conservative Protestants wanted to take back what they saw as “their country.” At first this response came from fringe voices but before long it became a vital part of Protestant evangelical Christianity in America. In 1963 Jerry Falwell got the idea to build a Christian school after the Supreme Court ruled against enforced Bible reading in schools. This decision further disestablished Protestantism in the schools. Falwell said, at that time, “the Christian world view was not only going to be pushed back but eliminated, and that another might replace it.” Lynchburg Christian Academy was opened in 1967 to be a place “for any and all who loved Christ and who wanted to study under born-again teachers in a Christian environment.” By 1971 Liberty University was started. The mission of both schools was not only to teach Christian values but “to oppose secularism.” By 1979 the Moral Majority was launched. This did more to help the religious right to enter partisan politics than any other development in modern American history.

By the middle 1960s we had elected our first Catholic president and anti-Semitism was increasingly disgusting to the vast majority of Americans. Racism was being exposed for its ugly evils and change was in the wings.  But by the 1970s conservative evangelicals were arguing that much of this was a result of secularism and secular ideals that would remove Jesus from America. Os Guinness noted that “nostalgia” was prominent during this time.

The focus of the religious right was on “perceived slights by a overly lenient mainstream . . . which was departing from pure Christian principles in the name of pluralism” (Tri-Faith America, 200). The religious right knew the power of names and thus co-opted the term Judeo-Christian America and “Judeo-Christianity” to promote their cause. Ronald Reagan would openly pursue the support of these religious conservatives quite powerfully and became a symbolic leader to the movement. (He did very little to alter the social and moral landscape in terms of actual presidential action, except for his personal statements from the White House pulpit!)

But as Schultz notes in the 1970s conservative Catholics, Jews and Protestants were becoming “co-religionists,” or as some put it, “co-belligerents.” They realized they did have more in common than they did with co-religionist liberals. Schultz concludes, “No longer were antipathies between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews animating social change; rather, the force behind change was the aversion between liberals of all faiths and conservatives of all faiths” (Tri-Faith America, 201-2). This had dramatic impact and demonstrated how radically different latter-day Protestants were from their mid-century heirs. As religious conservatives sought government aid for private religious schools they did not know they were standing against those Protestants who had held an entirely opposite position less than fifty years before!

Evangelicals now appealed to “minority rights” and employed strategies that would have been unimaginable only a few decades earlier. A complete shift had taken place and very few noticed. That shift still has rather dramatic impact upon religious and social life in America.

Tomorrow: The Increase of Other Faiths and the Future

Tri-Faith America

Kevin M. Schultz, assistant professor of history and Catholic studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, demonstrates in his newly published study, Tri-Faith America (Oxford University Press, 2011), that the central drama of twentieth-century American religion was a tense, complex and successful course of change that ultimately led to mutual accommodation between America’s religious traditions.  Schultz follows the lead of Will Herberg (1901-1977) that was popularized in his famous book, Protestant, Catholic and Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955). Herberg, who was brought up in a secular Jewish family and became a communist, eventually turned away from Marxism and became a religious conservative. During the 1960s Herberg became the religion editor of the National Review, the conservative magazine begun by William F., Buckley (1925-2008), a devout Catholics. (I prize a small signed photo of Buckley, taken with me outside Edman Chapel at Wheaton College, when we met at  a event to honor and study Malcolm Muggeridge.)

In Herberg’s most famous aforementioned work, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, he created a sociological framework for the study of religion in the United States by demonstrating how immigration and the resulting multi-ethnic culture of America were profoundly reflected in our religious movements and institutions. This thesis has stood the test of time and thus Herberg’s book is still very important for the study of the social impact of American religion in the twentieth century.

In Kevin Schultz’s new book he goes where Will Herberg did in his famous book but Schultz develops the Herberg thesis further. He does so with rich subtlety and profoundly engaging insight. He balances the achievements of our religious changes, with what he calls ‘tri-faith America,’ against its weaknesses and liabilities. This balanced perspective prompts Wilfred McClay, one of my favorite current religion writers, to say that Schultz has attained a balance that is rare, showing both the strengths and weaknesses of this new social arrangement.

If you’ve been awake you’ve surely noticed that the social and religious complexity of America has rather profoundly changed in a little more than one generation. The ways in which these changes have taken place are recognized by very few non-scholars, especially conservative Christians and ministers who continue to appeal to donors and listeners for a return to a culture that hasn’t exited for more than seventy-five year!  Sadly, the results of this continuing social shift are missed by most evangelical writers who address culture and religion in America. This leaves the rest of us unable to make sense of what is actually happening to our common social and religious life. Frequent appeals are thus made for “taking back America” or “changing our godless culture.” These have been a part of our steady diet since the 1970s. But too few have stopped to realize that these conservative appeals arose only a decade after the Civil Rights movement had reached its greatest achievements. Why? Is this all part of a larger story our Christian leaders have missed? I think so.

Kevin Schultz puts the history of American religion at the center of our political and social history and specifically shows the true origins of our American version of religious pluralism. America was a Protestant nation. Make no mistake about this historical truth. But this idea was clearly abandoned in the twentieth century. What replaced it was a new national image premised on the idea of three separate, equally American faiths—Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. By pressing their own versions of pluralism both Catholics and Jews changed everything from college fraternity life to our understanding of social etiquette, neighborhoods, the armed forces and what should or should not happen in public education. This altered our entire political and social landscape in ways that profoundly massively changed our lives by the early twenty-first century. These fundamental changes, according to Schultz, began in the early 1900s and led to the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.  Through these changes Catholics and Jews forced America to change by confronting the new reality of religious pluralism.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt put the real story of America bluntly, if privately, in 1942. The president noted that the United States was "a Protestant country and Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance." This is fact. Everything else is religious and social mythmaking done by people who have an agenda of some sort or another.

I give you one simple point to demonstrate my point. By the time the Religious Right arose in the 1970s conservatives like Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) were talking about a “moral majority.” This loose-knit coalition consisted of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. He spoke, as did others in the movement, of a Judeo-Christian America. What he, and almost all those in the movement, never told you was that a Judeo-Christian America was a myth in terms of our century-plus of history. There simply wasn’t a Judeo-Christian America until the rise of religious pluralism (brought about by immigration and massive social change) in the twentieth century. Falwell, and his friends and followers, urged us to take back the country of our forefathers but their appeal was not even remotely close to historical reality. The early twentieth century had already begun to see great change in American religion and the Religious Right seemed tone deaf and oblivious to this reality.

Tomorrow: Putting America’s Religious Change into Perspective

An Inevitable Clash of Human Rights?

The most basic of all human rights, hammered out for millennia, is the right of religious freedom. I have often said that this is America’s greatest single contribution to civilization. Here what you believe is permitted and you can practice your personal faith without state interference, so long as no one else’s rights are harmed by your practice.

There is a fierce debate going on now about civil unions and same-sex marriage. Personally I have no doubt that same-sex marriage will eventually become the norm. It already is the norm in some states and over time I believe that it will be law in the majority of states. It will then become the law of the nation. On one side people argue that their right to free expression is hindered by our present laws while on the other people believe a fundamental building block of a moral and decent society is at stake.

My deepest concern in this debate has been growing for some time and it is not a concern over where we will end up defining marriage. In the end how the state actually defines marriage should not be a primary concern for Christians. (Note: I said “primary” concern!) Ancient Rome defined marriage and the early church clearly had very different ideas about sex and marriage. The early church not only survived but eventually it thrived!

My concern in this debate is about religious freedom, our most basic Constitutional right. Why does this concern me?

A recent example in Illinois serves to make my point. The governor informed a number of diocesan Catholic Charities that the state would not renew its foster care and adoption contracts with them starting in fiscal 2012 because their policy on not placing children with unmarried couples allegedly violates a new state civil unions law.

Now the ironies of this challenge are quite considerable. First, Governor Patrick Quinn is a Mass-attending Catholic. As such he is going head-to-head with Illinois bishops and Catholic social agencies. Second, the Illinois bill that created same-sex civil unions is called the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act. Third, proponents of the law explicitly denied the critics’ claims that this type of impact would come to bear on adoption agencies run by religious groups who disagree with the law.

New York provides a similar example with its same-sex marriage law. Before the law went into effect the New York Times editorialized about the “discriminatory intent” of the law’s provision that “allows tax-exempt charities to refuse to marry a same-sex couple or to allow the use of their buildings or services for weddings or wedding parties.”

This all means exactly what the words say. Many proponents of same-sex marriage are not satisfied to get the law changed about marriage. They want to remove the religious freedom churches have previously enjoyed to follow conscience and not the state. The editorial board of the NY Times clearly wants Catholic priests to marry same-sex couples or face the consequences.

What are the consequences? Right now they might seem almost inconsequential but the first line of attack is on Catholic social services. The same has already happened with regard to abortion and now it is happening with regard to same-sex reforms.

Are all advocates of same-sex marriage committed to forcing the church (legally) to conform to their views? Not at all. I think, in fact, it is only a minority at this point. But unless we gain clear evidence of respect for religious freedom the minority will become a cultural majority over time. Mine is not a far-right plea from the hinterlands. This is what is really happening. We had better defend the religious rights of all or the day will come when none of us will have them.

The solution is for Christians to join with non-Christians who are reasonable, and understand our system of laws, and to fight together for principles of democracy and tolerance that the church and our fiercest critics all know is right. This is not a Christian issue, per se, it is an issue of freedom for all who want to practice their faith in public, not just in their hearts. If we lose this freedom we will lose the greatest freedom our nation affords to us. This is why we must stand with every faith and allow all to express their faith as they see fit.

The Science of Tornadoes

The recent wave of storms that have hit portions of the United States have been unusually deadly. In the two states in which I lived in my first nineteen years, Tennessee and Alabama, 276 people have died. In Joplin, Missouri, one town is estimated to have lost 142 people in one May storm. This got me to thinking about the science of storms. And it also made me wonder if the frequency and strength of these storms could have any relationship to global warming?

Before I proceed we need a simple definition of science. Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Science observes facts, organizes them and offers a response to what we see and know in the world. Good science never conflicts with religious faith and vice versa.

Researchers have been to places like Tuscaloosa, where I lived in 1967-69, to study the storm's impact. Now they've been to Joplin as well. Their goal is to study the unprecedented number of twisters that have destroyed towns and killed people. Here are some of the questions they've posed and responded to in recent writing I've given time to digesting about this subject.

1. Was there any direct connection between the storms in the Southeast and the one in Joplin?

“No” says a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Because they were separated by three weeks they were “completely different weather systems.”

2. What caused these storms?

Warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico moved north until it encountered cold air from different altitudes. When these come together they produce wind shear and circular air motions. The air from the south was unusually warm for this time of year, about 2 degrees warmer than normal. In April the jet stream stalled and allowed a repeated series of storms to develop.

3. How severe was the Joplin storm and some of the others?

Many of these storms, and Joplin was certainly among them, were E5 storms. (The rating is called an Enhanced Fujita scale!) This scale measures intensity and this E5 means it had speeds of more than 200 mph. What is interesting is that you cannot measure the wind inside the storm. You can only determine this by the damage surveyed on the ground after the storm.

4. How common are such storms?

Between 1950 and 1994 only 1% of U.S. tornadoes were E4 or E5 in intensity. During that same period 67% of all deaths came in such storms. Deaths have increased in recent years. Experts believe this is primarily because of urban sprawl, which means a tornado has a greater likelihood of striking a more heavily populated area.

5. Is this an unusual year for tornadoes?

Over the last few decades 1,200 storms a year is the average. We were already at 1,076 before Joplin.  The real question we long to understand is why. In weather terms it is because the jet stream is moving farther south and bringing it in contact with excess moisture and triggering larger storms.

6. Does global warming have anything to do with this pattern?

Most agree that we do not know. It is, simply put, impossible to link specific storms to climate change in general. But one climate change model (note the word “model” I use here) suggests that we will see more intense storms as average global temperatures climb. This “appears” to be happening according to many scientists.

Nothing triggers more emotional reaction than to link any weather events to global warming. I confess that I do not understand this at all. I am well aware of the problems of global warming models but I also believe we have evidence (without clear and conclusive reasons for why) that such a phenomenon is taking place. The patterns are not simple and universal but there is something to be seen and studied that goes beyond what we saw decades ago. Why do we find it impossible to discuss this without it turning into a battle over theories of explanation that demonize the other side in the debate?

There are two conclusions I draw about the science in this instance. One, there is a lot we do not know and we should continue to do real science and be open to what it teaches us. When Christians have been at the top of their game, as it were, they have welcomed scientific research and study. Two, Christians should be much more interested in the planet than they often are. We are not known for loving creation and a deep desire to protect it. Why not?