John Collins, author of The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography, tells Terry Gross about how his scholarship gives him the long-view of religion:

One of the things — especially if you study The Old Testament — one of the things that it gives you is freedom to criticize your religious tradition. … One of the classes I’m teaching at the moment, we’re going through the prophets and the prophets criticize the temple and the king and the use of tradition and just about everything else in sight, and they do so with the vehemence that the Vatican has never dreamed of. There isn’t a prophet in The Old Testament who wouldn’t be excommunicated if he were a member of the contemporary Catholic church for the sheer vehemence of their criticism of the tradition.

Image of Qumran Cave 4 where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Randall Niles via Flickr.

The church doesn’t say that the ordination of women is not possible because somehow women are unfit to carry out functions of the priest, but because on the level of sacramental signs, it’s not the choice that our Lord made when it comes to those who act in his very person, as the church’s bridegroom. And you can say that sounds like a lot of poetry or you know, how do we know that’s true, but if you’re a Catholic, this is part of our sacraments and practice for 2 millennia, and it’s not just an arbitrary decision of male oppression over women.

— Bishop Blair Explains Vatican’s Criticism Of U.S. Nuns

The question is, ‘Can you be Catholic and have a questioning mind?’ That’s what we’re asking. …

— Sister Pat Farrell [full interview here]

Women theologians around the world have been seriously looking at the question of: How have the Church’s interpretations of how we talk about God, interpret Scripture, organize life in the Church — how have they been tainted by a culture that minimizes the value and the place of women?

— Sister Pat Farrell

Our works are very much pro-life. We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-fetus than actually pro-life. If the rights of the unborn trump all of the rights of all of those who are already born, that is a distortion too — if there’s such an emphasis on that. However, we have sisters who work in right to life issues. We also have many, many ministries that support life. We dedicate to our lives to those on the margins of society, many of whom are considered throw-away people: the impaired, the chronically mentally ill, the elderly, the incarcerated, to the people on death row. We have strongly spoken out against the death penalty, against war, hunger. All of those are right to life issues. There’s so much being said about abortion that is often phrased in such extreme and such polarizing terms that to choose not to enter into a debate that is so widely covered by other sectors of the Catholic Church — and we have been giving voice to other issues that are less covered but are equally as important.

— Sister Pat Farrell, on today’s Fresh Air

Everything you need to know about how they see Obama was what happened at where Bryan Fischer works with the American Family Association shortly after the election in 2008. The group, which calls itself a Christian ministry, passed around a picture of Obama’s face, which they had blended with that of Adolf Hitler. And they sort of posted it on the wall and all laughed at it. It showed Obama with a little Hitler moustache and swastikas behind him. They have attacked Obama relentlessly since his election in 2008. They regard him as the avatar of godless socialism.

— Jane Mayer profiles Christian radio host Bryan Fischer on today’s Fresh Air.

He wants to shape the policy of the Republican Party because he hopes to change America. He’s evangelizing to make America more in line with his Biblical views. On his own, he probably defines such far out views that there’s a tendency to dismiss him. But what makes Bryan Fischer worth paying some attention to is that he’s part of a larger group — a bloc of voters, the evangelical white voters — who have become a very well-organized and very significant part of the Republican Party at this point.

— On today’s Fresh Air, Jane Mayer from The New Yorker details how a Christian radio host from Tupelo, Miss. is pushing far-right and anti-gay policy decisions on the Romney campaign and the Republican Party.

I would probably have to say that reading fiction — those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I’ve gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there’s always another perspective.

— Tom Perrotta on fiction vs. religion

I haven’t lost my faith but I’ve lost my religion. I still believe in something so deeply. … I’ve never really gotten past that quote from Anne Frank in her diary, where she says that people are really good at heart. But I feel like the Catholic Church – no – the Catholic hierarchy has been disinviting people like me and especially women like me for so many years that I finally took the hint.

— Anna Quindlen on religion and faith [full interview here]

I don’t have any real spirituality in my life — I’m kind of an atheist — but when music can take me to the highest heights, it’s almost like a spiritual feeling. It fills that void for me.

— Jack Black on Fresh Air

But as everyone should know by now, liberties begin to erode when you have laws that are too widely drawn. And laws which say that under no circumstances can a court take any account of the Shariah are necessarily discriminatory. They’re necessarily over broad. And they necessarily create communal dissention for no good purpose.

— Sadakat Kadri on the movement to ban Shariah law in America.

One thing I realized when traveling around the Muslim world is how closely these hard-line interpretations of Islamic law are associated with political consternation and turmoil. There isn’t a country anywhere in the Muslim world which has been applying Muslim laws continuously for hundreds of years and which is drawing on genuine tradition. It’s a revival of supposed traditions which don’t really pay much heed to history at all.

— Sadakat Kadri on interpretations of the Shariah over the last 40 years.

The argument just tends to get so confused these days between people who attack the Shariah when actually what they ought to be attacking is the hard-line interpretations of Islamic law. By attacking the Shariah, basically a huge amount of mistrust and incomprehension is created between Muslims and non-Muslims. Because as far as a Muslim is concerned, an attack on the Shariah is an attack on God.

— On today’s Fresh Air, English barrister and historian Sadakat Kadri describes 1400 years of Islamic law and how it’s changed over the centuries.

26 percent of all Americans say they have been given a direct revelation from God.

nprfunfacts:

That according to a survey conducted by anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann.

There’s this amazing prayer by a Jesuit father that says ‘Fall in love with God, stay in love with God and it will change everything.’ I don’t have this ontological commitment to this God that’s kind of out there, but I do have the sense that I’m a little more able to allow myself to experience the good and the aliveness of the world, if that makes any sense.

— T.M. Luhrmann is an anthropology professor at Stanford University. On today’s Fresh Air, she talks about how her experiences working with the people at The Vineyard changed her own ways of looking at God.