Global Survey On Theological Education: Fill & Download for Free

I’m a Canadian who has worked legally in all 50 states for over 40 years.I have also worked in dozens of other countries including Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Australia & New Zealand… Just to give you some perspective.In that time, I’ve made many friends & professional acquaintances there… Some truly wonderful & special people.I’ve developed a few observations over the years that have occurred to me in my travels there.American exceptionalism is a real thing. Americans are brought up to believe that they're number one… In everything. That includes (but is not limited to): Freedom, Civil Rights, Education, Capitalism, Military might, Recreation… I could go on. Those that eventually travel outside of America fight hard to maintain this perspective as reality rears its head.American Hegemony is also a real thing. America only wants to participate in alliances when they’re in charge. This naturally leads to anti-global sentiments as they’re are perceived from afar as “not playing well with others”. I believe that the only reason that the USA permitted the UN to build their world HQ in NYC was to preserve a perceived ability to somehow exert more control. American hegemony also explains why America refused to sign on the World Court (ICC). Now, a Nationalist President has pulled America out of virtually every alliance & treaty that they have ever signed on to. The sole exception appears to be the “USMCA” which was already on the table before the current administration came to power. There is even talk of America wanting to pull out of NATO.America tends to politicize EVERYTHING… Including religion. Only in middle-eastern theologies will you find a political system that includes religion as a tenet. Muslim countries in particular. Religious organizations in America are far too powerful & influential. You cannot even run for political office there without presenting your religious “bona fides”. To the rest of the civilized world, this is grotesque.America lately appears to represent “Capitalism run amok”. This is the end result of money having so much undue influence in politics. Legal judgements that have allowed for the concept that “businesses are people” are partly at fault here. This is perverse. This is the system that allows for the richer to become richer while the poor become poorer. It fosters no empathy for society at large & appears to foster an attitude among many along the lines of “I’ve got mine, screw you”. Those that suggest that “those lazy people should just get jobs” have likely never faced real obstacles to getting jobs… Being poor IS an obstacle. I don’t advocate for full-on Socialism but I expect that some middle ground has to exist in a civilized society.Education has become politicized to a fault. This has been occurring for generations with propaganda & revisionist history in order to propagate the notion of “American greatness”. Americans are now engaged in a fight to define what the words “truth” & “fact” actually mean. I’m surprised that they can still agee that 2 + 2 = 4.I have to admit that, by world standards, I am a progressive. That is to say that I believe in progress in all of its forms. That is tantamount to “growing up”… Something that is hopefully never completed as long as we are alive.That said, America is currently more divided than at any time since the Civil War in the 1860s.I admit that, if I were an American, I would be a Democrat. They certainly are far from perfect and suffer many fault lines that come with the territory of having a “large tent”.IMHO, the issues I have with Republican policies is that they’re generally regressive & are actually engineered to foster an overall mistrust in government in general.It’s rather ironic to me that those that favour minimal government are generally the ones that seek to game it for their own personal gains. That is disingenuous and without honour.Poor Republicans tend to be relatively uneducated & have been set up to be more responsive to fear & outrageous conspiracy theories.Rich Republicans are greedy & self-absorbed by definition. The concept of “Tax Avoidance” is rife with these folks. To those that would say “paying more taxes than you need to is stupid”, I would say “how do you suppose that government services are paid for?”In most European countries, citizens are proud of paying their taxes. They see it as an investment in their country.From my perspective as a Canadian, many Americans have a lot to learn about basic respect for others as well as innate fairness & sportsmanship.For the record, these personal observations are very general in nature & fortunately, I’ve been privileged to encounter & deal with the exceptional Americans that most of us just refer to as “good people”.I look forward to that day in America when basic human decency prevails.

September 11 attacksJonestown massacre2013 Myanmar's Buddhist anti-Muslim riots"...kill the idolaters wherever you find them" (Quran 9:5)"... utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox, and sheep, camel and ass". (1 Samuel 15:3)How can we tell what elements of God’s morality are culturally relative assumptions and which are genuine revelations? If it is up to us to decide what God said and what he didn’t, especially if these judgment calls are based on what sounds good to us, then we have become the authority, not God, not scripture.Atheist nations are more peacefulBy Tomas ReesBy Tomas Rees​"The 2009 Global Peace Index has just been released. It's basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is.They put it together by assessing 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy (Guardian).You can see a world map of peace at the Vision of Humanity website, and also take a look at country rankings for 2009, as well as earlier years.New Zealand came top this year. Hmm, New Zealand is a pretty non-religious country. In fact, if you eyeball the rankings, the top few countries are all pretty non-religious.What I've done in the figures here is to take data from the World Values Survey on the percentage of people in each country who say they are a committed atheist, and also on the percentage of people who say that they go to a religious service at least once a month.Then I split the sample into two equal groups, based on their score on the Global Peace Index. The ones in the 'Peaceful' group are countries with a GPI score of less than 1.8.Sure enough, peaceful countries have more atheists and fewer regular worshipers. The difference is highly statistically significant (P=0.001 or less) - in other words, it's real, not just a chance finding.Now, there are several possible reasons for this. It could be that people living in turbulent countries turn to religion, or it could be that religion is not a good way to structure modern society. Or it could be that some other factor or combination of factors (democracy? free speech? education? government welfare?) generates citizens who are both peaceful and non-religious.Whatever, it's another blow to the idea that secularization leads to social meltdown. Atheist countries are, in fact, more peaceful."The causes can be many, but more atheist countries are less likely to have criminals than more theist countries: Predominantly Atheist Countries Have Lowest Crime RateSince the field of criminology got started and data were collected of the religious affiliation of criminal offenders, the fact that the unaffiliated and the nonreligious had the lowest crime rates has been noted (von Hentig, H. 1948. The Criminal and His Victim. Yale University Press.). According to von Hentig, being unaffiliated is the best predictor of law-abiding behavior. There is no reason to doubt the validity of this generalization today (all data from Wikipedia):Rates of self-reported atheism:United States 4%Italy 7%Portugal 12%Sweden 85%Denmark 80%Norway 72%Japanese 65%Country Prisoners per 100,000 populationUnited States 716Portugal 134Italy 108Norway 71Sweden 67Denmark 68Japan 54Countries by intentional homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitantsUnited States 4.7Portugal 1.2Italy 0.9Sweden 1.0Norway 0.6Denmark 0.9Japan 0.4The obvious comparison is between the United States, which is unusually religious for an industrialized nation, and Europe, which over the past century has become increasingly secular. As far as we can tell, European morality does not appear to be on the verge of collapse. Europa's murder rate is much lower, as is the number of people in prison. Although Jesus is reported as saying that God will save those who have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, and clothed the naked, if you are weak and vulnerable, you will be fortunate if you are in Europe, with its much better safety net and systems of universal health care than in the United States. When it comes to helping the world’s poorest people, the record of almost all the European nations is far better than that of the United States. Sweden gives more than four times as large a proportion of its gross national income in foreign aid as the United States.Indication of failure of the societyThere is a negative relationship between societal well-being and religion: the least religious societies tend to be the most successful. The total proportion of people of no religion, which encompassed those who self-described as atheists and agnostics, and those indifferent towards organized religion, it’s a majority: 71% in Denmark, 73% in Norway, 79% in Sweden, 67% in France, 52% in Germany, and 58% in the United Kingdom. Sociologists measure the well-being of countries using indices of social dysfunction that include things like levels of divorce, homicide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, alcohol consumption, poverty, income inequality, and so on. The least religious societies are the most successful. (See Sacred and Secular - Religion and Politics Worldwide - Pippa Norris 2nd ed 2012 and Atheist nations are more peaceful and Predominantly Atheist Countries Have Lowest Crime Rate). While this correlation does not by itself implicate a cause, neither does it support the claim that religion is essential for a harmonious society. A strong predictor of religiosity is income inequality. In the United States, income inequality is one of the statistics most highly correlated with the national level of religious belief: the higher the inequality, the higher the average degree of religiosity. The two factors fluctuate in tandem, with religiosity increasing only after income inequality rises. The strength of religious belief changing after income inequality, and in the same direction, suggests that it’s the inequality that breeds faith rather than the other way around. There is nothing in the data that supports the claim that increased national religiosity is correlated with increased national virtue. We should surely find it strange that religion that is alleged to be a particularly important constituent of moral virtue fails to be significantly negatively correlated with uncontroversial measures of societal dysfunction. Look at the tables that plot nations’ religiosity and the tables that plot nations’ societal dysfunctions: murder rates, rape rates, burglary rates, alcohol abuse rates, drug abuse rates, marital breakdown rates, teen pregnancy rates, and so forth in http://www.nationmaster.com. Religiosity is not negatively correlated with higher levels of societal dysfunction. It is false that religion is a necessary condition of societal well-being, and it is false that secularity, atheism, agnosticism, and religious indifference are detrimental to society.IntoleranceThere is a positive correlation between the degree of involvement with religion and intolerance and prejudice. Religiosity has been found to correlate with increased racial prejudice, intolerance of non-conformists, and a punitive rather than forgiving attitude. 34 of 44 findings, from 36 studies conducted between 1940 and 1975, suggest a positive relationship between intolerance and involvement in religion, with only 2 of these 44 findings bucking this trend (See Batson, C. Daniel in Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, edited by Steve Clarke, 2013) Religious commitment in the United States is highly correlated with racism. This should abolish the ever-present claim that religion is the most important warrant of morality. (See Why don't we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14 (1), 126–139)Why is Religion such a Potent Source of Violence?Religion correlates with heightened tolerance of in-group members, but it also correlates with increased intolerance of out-group members; and in religiously pluralistic countries, such as the USA, the overall effect of religion is to promote intolerance and prejudice. The relationship between religion and intolerance is nothing if not paradoxical. Increased involvement in religion, which often involves increased exposure to exhortations from religious leaders to be tolerant and to avoid prejudice, tends to result in heightened intolerance and increased prejudice. ( See The Justification of Religious Violence - Steve Clarke, 2014)What are explanatory or motivating reasons for religious violence?The followers of many different religions believe that there is an ongoing war, taking place on a cosmic scale, between the forces of good and the enemies of the good; and they are liable to appeal to the ethics of conventional war to justify violent action undertaken while prosecuting this cosmic war. The forces of good are typically understood by the religious to be led by God, or some other supreme good supernatural being, who is often believed to be locked in a struggle with forces led by Satan, or some other powerful evil supernatural being. Almost all of the religions that postulate an ongoing cosmic war call upon the devout to be soldiers or play the equivalent role in other religious traditions and contribute to the war effort on behalf of the forces of good. Most secular people will be familiar with appeals to the concept of a just war, which is often invoked in public discourse in attempts to persuade them to endorse their country’s participation in this or that war. Religious people think that, if they are at war, then they are fighting a just war. If a religious group is under attack, or imminent danger of being harmed, by Satan, or evil, or God’s enemies, or the allies of Satan, then presumably that religious group is entitled to use all reasonable means to defend its members, including violent ones. Religious groups are entitled to forcibly intervene to protect those innocent parties.The possibility of eternal happiness in heaven is sufficient to justify a range of violent acts. Indeed, in religions in which these are invoked, they are used to motivate the incorporation of considerations of consequence into justifications for violent action. If in the September 11 attacks hijackers believed that they will experience an eternity of bliss in heaven, rather than an eternity of suffering in hell, as a result of conducting the 9/11 attacks, then at least one set of consequences, which needs to be considered when we evaluate the morality of the 9/11 attacks, tells in favor of conducting those attacks. Members of Heaven's Gate believed that they will not die, if they kill themselves in the right way, at the right time, but will go on to live lives of eternal happiness instead, then the consequences of killing themselves in the right way, at the right time, are sure to be preferred to the consequences of not killing themselves. If Japanese people members of the religious group of Aum Shinrikyo believed that they will experience significantly better afterlives if they die by sarin gas sooner rather than later, then, all things being equal, considerations of consequence will lead us to prefer their dying sooner rather than later.Any demonstration of disrespect towards, or any mistreatment of, sacred lands, scripture, buildings, relics, or people can be expected to provoke outrage amongst those who hold these to be sacred and is liable to incite violence. The sacred is not an exclusively religious concept, and some of the appeals to the sacred that are made are conceptually close to secular appeals to sacred values. The view that human life is sacred, which is widespread amongst religious believers, underpins much ordinary secular morality, and which is enshrined in the common law. George Tiller, an American physician who provided abortions, was shot and killed. The appeal to justifiable homicide, offered in defense of Scott Roeder for his killing of George Tiller involves an appeal to a variant of this widely accepted view about the moral status of all living humans, with just one minor conceptual shift. Instead of holding that it is always immoral to attempt to kill innocent humans after they have been born, defenders of Scott Roeder hold that it is always immoral to kill innocent humans after they have been conceived. The conviction that lands, such as Israel and Arabia, are sacred and that everyone except members of certain religious groups should be forcibly removed from them is not wholly without analogs in the secular world. Secular sacralization occurs in many countries, which treat battlefields and memorials to national heroes as sacred sites. Also, national emblems such as flags are often sacralized. Bin Laden’s view that all forms of government, other than Islamic theological government, are blasphemous. Meir Kahane was an American Rabbi that emigrated to Israel and founded the Kach Party. Kahane and the Kach Party’s main goal was the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, by force if necessary. Bin Laden’s and Meir Kahane’s view that a particular people are holy and therefore entitled to disregard the moral claims and interests of all other peoples are extreme appeals to sacred values.What is so scandalous about outside influence in a religious milieu? The message from the outside world is not just that other ways of living are possible, that some people may not believe, or believe differently, or feel unconstrained by religious morality, or in the case of women make their own decisions without male supervision. The message is also that people can do that without paying a heavy price. Seen from the point of view of a religious group, the fact that many choices can be made in outside conditions without paying a heavy price means that defection is not costly and is therefore very likely.ConsiderationsWe have a choice between conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper. If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence would you invoke to prove they should value evidence? Can you claim that hatred based on religion would inevitably be replaced by hatred based on something else as if the world had to fulfill a given quota of antagonism? Sunnis and Shiites are still Muslims and have the same cultural background. They kill each other for faith alone. If you believe that religion can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and unbelievers rather badly. The more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the situation. Without a doubt, faith is the prime aggravator of violence in Palestine (Jews vs. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Christian Serbians vs. Catholic Christian Croatians and Orthodox Serbians vs. Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Christian Protestants vs. Christian Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims vs. Hindus), Sudan (Muslims vs. Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims vs. Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims vs. Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists vs. Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims vs. Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite vs. Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians vs. Chechen Muslims and Muslim Azerbaijanis vs. Catholic and Orthodox Armenians). Religions gave us the assassinations of Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat by Islamic believers, of Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish gunman, and India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh bodyguards.Religion disables reality checks when it encourages people to believe in beings of untestable existence and undetectable forces, making people more vulnerable to oppression, fraud, and abuse. Religious leaders frequently contribute to wars and terrorism by endorsing or supporting violence to promote their religious goals. For example, nowhere is faith's violence described more vividly, and with more stomach-turning details of ruthlessness, than in the Hebrew Bible. Nowadays Palestinians have been several times associated with a Biblical antagonist, Amalekites. Rabbi Israel Hess has recommended killing Palestinians, basing on biblical verses such as 1 Samuel 15. Shulamit Aloni, a member of the Israeli Knesset indicated in 2003 that Jewish children in Israel were being taught in religious schools that Palestinians were Amalek, and therefore an act of total genocide was a religious obligation. From Maya's human sacrifice to Shiite and Catholic self-flagellation, a sense of righteousness leads to violence because of claims of divine unverifiable favor for themselves, based on appeals to God.The notion of Buddhism as an inherent pacifist religion has a strong element of Western oversimplification. Buddhist teaching has never prohibited believers from fighting in defense of a just cause. Buddhists have participated in wars ever since their faith came into being. Militant monks have fought for Chinese rulers and against them for centuries. Japan's samurai warriors were ardent Buddhists, men who cited the Buddha's teachings on the impermanence of physical existence as a good argument for soldiering. In Myanmar currently, much of the violence is directed at the Rohingya, a largely stateless Muslim group in Myanmar’s far west that the U.N. calls one of the world’s most persecuted people. In 2013 the central town of Meikhtila burned for days, with entire Muslim quarters razed by Buddhist mobs after a monk was killed by Muslims. The official death toll: two Buddhists and at least 40 Muslims. Among the country’s majority Bamar ethnic group, as well as across Buddhist parts of Asia, there’s a vague sense that their religion is under siege, that Islam, having centuries ago conquered the Buddhist lands of Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, now seeks new territory. Buddhist nationalists stoke fears that local Muslim populations are increasing faster than their own, and they worry about Middle Eastern money pouring in to build new mosques. Says the Buddhist monk Wirathu: “In Buddhism, we are not allowed to go on the offensive, but we have every right to protect and defend our community.” “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog." Later, as he preaches to a crowd, he compels others to repeat after him, “I will sacrifice myself for the race”. When more than 1,500 monks met in 2013 at a monastery in the outskirts of Rangoon, the monks discussed a proposal to restrict marriages between Buddhists and Muslims.Is there objective morality in Christianity as were the biblically justified inquisitions, Crusades, anti-Semitism and pogroms, warrior Popes, witch hunts and executions, support for capital punishment, corporal punishment under the guise of “spare the rod and spoil the child”, justifications of slavery, world-wide colonialism in the name of conversion to Christianity, the systemic violence of women subjected to men, and killings of doctors on abortion clinics viewed as skirmishes in a grand Christian confrontation between forces of evil and good? If Christ said, "I came not to bring peace but a sword", (Matthew 10:34), it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled.The very fact that there is no faith that is the majority in the world shows that there is not enough impartial evidence of a specific God and his morality for the majority. Why would God allow mortal disagreements about him for lack of convincing impartial evidence, not making his existence and morality absolutely obvious and undeniable? Why would a good God need to be absent?If the concept of God or supernatural is compatible with most cultures remaining radically mistaken, why does every religion like to think that his faith accurately indicates true morality? If a moral God existed, he would ensure that people would know how not to relate to him immorally, as through human or animal sacrifices, or through the religious precedence of the masculine over the feminine, or through costly or painful religious demonstrations of vulnerable people to him.The affection of a caring mother is palpable and comforts her children. A caring mother is not absent and does not need and could not use her power to coerce her children to love her. However, some believers say that God’s true existence and love cannot be palpable because that would unduly coerce people, taking away their moral freedom. If so, then:People are not coerced now but will be in the afterlife, for eternity;Supposed palpable divine providence and miracles nowadays or in sacred scriptures are palpable evidence of false Gods;Those who believe in God do not practice the morality they desire because they are coerced;Moses, Mohamed, the disciples of Jesus, and even Satan himself were compromised in their moral freedom;Loving a being does not require its palpable existence, only imagination of hypotheses;For sacred scriptures, divine love and moral freedom don’t have any meaning: Eternal hate and everlasting torture await in the afterlife anyone who questions the compassionate God's infinite love. If it's scary and sick if your boyfriend or girlfriend tells you: "If you don't love me, I'll torture you indefinitely", why is it not if God tells you this in the sacred scriptures?If God’s lack of moral improvement does not detract from his perfect goodness, then why does he value so much that we learn to resist evil instead of always being so? If God can create a paradise full of angels with free will, then free will is no justification for suffering. The value developed through experience with evil is the overcoming of evil. If there was no evil, why would God have to allow and make evil? If God's existence and love were palpable, coercion would not be necessary;God is unjust because he does not immediately punish and coerce immoral actions, but only in an intangible supposed life after death, and therefore makes his morality without tangible consequences in this life. The result is that human history and cultures reveal widespread differences of belief about what is morally wrong. There is no religious morality that forms a majority in the world. If God is hidden, the majority cannot develop the supposedly necessary morality, and therefore the absence of a good God is actually evidence that he does not exist;Why do believers support any attempts by people or governments to coerce immorality that God does not want to coerce? God’s intention cannot be that we alleviate the worst suffering, because our ignorance about why God allows or causes terrible and incomprehensible suffering is equal to our ignorance about why we should intervene in God’s supposed always good actions or omissions. If we must trust in God’s intentions, this trust must paralyze our morality;If an absent God is good, why would evil be the absence of God? Many can testify from personal experience that the state of alienation from God is not a state for which torture is an adequate metaphor. They were never interested in fellowship with God, to begin with, why would death change that?The simplest and most justifiable belief is not that an absent God is good, an unjustifiable belief, but that a good God simply does not exist.Supplement to DevasGuru's answer to What are the strongest arguments against religion?

We have a survey for (some of) that![1]Yes, this survey covers all Americans and not just evangelicals, but it’s just fun to work through all the wonderful (and sad) crosstabs:People who are older, poorer or rural pray more for health.Americans of color pray more for daily safety than white Americans.Parents of young children and city folk pray more for peace. Parents of young children also pray more for sleep, together with Millennials.Conservatives pray more for the nation or government, while liberals pray more for global injustices and problems. (Black Americans pray more for both than white Americans.)As for evangelicals specifically, the article gives few cross-tabs, other than noting that they pray more intensely than other Americans, especially in gratitude (86%), for family and community (89%) and for confession and forgiveness (77%). Interestingly, the 10-point gap between these categories is about half the 20-point gap in the general population — I’d like to think that the theological commitment to a gospel of forgiveness does have real, empirical effect. Evangelicals are also shockingly likely (71%) to pray for “things I suddenly feel compelled or urged to pray about”, which tells me that Barna either couldn’t or wouldn’t crosstab out the charismatics and Pentecostals from the Neo-Reformed, which is a real and important emerging schism (boo, hiss).All this makes sense to me. My prayers are somewhat formulaic at this point — thanksgiving, forgiveness, family needs for peace and sleep, needs the world over (currently the Hong Kong unrest and the Australian bushfires in particular). It’s a mark of my privilege that I pray little for the safety and basic needs of myself and others; answering this question has reminded me of that. And this is a general fact found in any sociological investigation of prayer as well:Results indicate that women, African-Americans, and those with lower incomes pray more often than males, whites, and those with higher incomes. Concerning content of prayer, African-Americans and those at lower levels of income and education are more likely to pray about petitionary concerns such as asking God to influence personal health or one's financial situation. In addition people at lower income levels are more likely to offer prayer in an effort to gain supernatural favor and good standing with the divine. Theoretically this is understood by conceptualizing prayer as a coping mechanism.[2]But what’s interesting is that (Christian) women pray more than men, which appears to show no clear international link with patriarchal oppression or lack thereof[3] :Interestingly, in Muslim countries, women pray about as often as men:And of course, in Judaism — uniquely across major world religions — men report praying more often than women. All this is an interesting mosaic across the peoples of the book, and I welcome any thoughtful (and edifying!) sociological reflections on these gender dynamics in the comments.Footnotes[1] Silent and Solo: How Americans Pray - Barna Group[2] Investigation of the Sociological Patterns of Prayer Frequency and Content * [3] Comparing daily prayer rates of women and men