Category — Religion

“Sweden’s newest religion may be the only faith that was born out of an insult,” reports Stephan Faris in Bloomberg Businessweek (2/13/12). That religion is Kopimism, and its “patron saint” is Peter Sunde, a leading activist and proponent of online piracy. The insult came courtesy of a lawyer prosecuting Peter for his role in Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site. When asked her opinion of Peter and his ilk, the lawyer said, “They’re a cult.” Peter went online and suggested starting the Missionary Church of Kopimism, holding “sacred the act of copying information,” and others ran with the idea.

“We have this history that every time somebody calls us something negative, we just take the name and make it ours,” says Peter. “We were called pirates, so we said, ‘Let’s make pirates cool.’ O.K., so now we’re a cult. Let’s make that fun as well.” Peter, himself, hasn’t joined the church because, he says, he’s an atheist. But a website devoted to Kopimism has attracted some 5,000 members (link). In January, the church was recognized by the Swedish government. “In the beginning it was a joke,” says church chairman Gustav Nipe. “But maybe we’ve stepped on something greater than we thought.”

To be recognized as a religious group, the Kopimists simply had to declare themselves as such and “hold some sort of meditative service.” For them, the first part was self-fulfilling and the second was a no-brainer — they “settled on file-sharing as their form of communal worship.” They did hit a snafu with some of the necessary paperwork, however. “They’re actually not so good at copying,” says Bertil Kallner of Kammarkollegiet, the Swedish agency that registers religions. Gustav Nipe envisions Kopimist weddings and perhaps even an official house of worship. “The Church of Sweden is selling a lot of its old churches,” he says. “I’d love it if we could buy one.”

Few people realize that 90 percent of all diamonds on the US market pass through New York City’s Diamond District, reports Alexandra Cheney in the Wall Street Journal (7/23/11). Even fewer are aware of the "particular set of guidelines" that govern how business is conducted there. "People walk by oblivious," says Alicia Oltuski, who has written a 400-page book, Precious Objects, about the "stretch of 47th Street, sandwiched by Fifth and Sixth Avenues and anchored by towering diamond-shaped lamps on all four corners." It’s a subject with which she is quite familiar, given that her father is himself a 47th Street diamond dealer.

"The business model may seem archaic, but it works," says Alicia. It’s a model based "largely on trust" in which "at any given moment one dealer could be in possession of another man’s diamonds, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with only a handshake as collateral. In this business, a man’s word means more than any amount of money." The practice actually "can be traced historically to Judaism. The Mazal, for example, which hails from the Yiddish phrase, ‘Mazal und brucha,’ or ‘luck and blessing,’ is the definitive word that signals the close of a deal." Such traditions are kept by a group known as the Diamond Dealers Club.

The Club is "a dual-floored facility where brokers can meet and arbitration tribunals are held." Its job has become more challenging, given "an influx of younger brokers and dealers entering the business," not to mention the global reach of the internet. Louis Rohde, director of member services, says some of this new generation "doesn’t fully understand the concept of Mazal," so the club is there to enforce it. The Club has also modernized, with an "intranet of sorts that connects the inventories of many members." But Alicia says traditions still prevail. "You may be able to take a course in gems, but you still can’t purchase trust or the years of education that come with being on this street," she says.

Elvira Go got the idea for a Catholic-themed restaurant after frequenting a small cafe near the Vatican, reports Jason Gutierrez via Agence France Presse (6/6/11). The cafe was popular with the clergy, and Elvira thought it would be cool to bring a similar idea back home, to the Philippines, where 80 percent of the population is Catholic. At first, she envisioned a small canteen, but the idea grew bigger because the Catholic Bishops Conference liked it. And so, last year, she opened Ristorante delle Mitre in Manila, featuring "a menu made in honor of the Catholic church’s bishops but priced to suit all members of the flock."

The restaurant’s head chef, Sister Evangeline Paras, says she considers her work to be "another ministry of the church," adding: "It also gives you a glimpse of how the priests and bishops live, what they do and how they eat." Indeed, Elvira devised the menu by asking each bishop to name their favorite dish. Items range from "salmon in tamarind stew" and "crispy pork legs" to "a selection of soups, salads, steaks, pasta and seafood from prawns to lobsters. Ice cream, bread, pizza and pastries are also freshly made in a backroom bakery." Also offered is a budget meal for less than a dollar.

The restaurant’s name was inspired by the hats bishops wear, and the decor includes "the glass-encased mitres of three late Filipino prelates." Also on display is a "life-sized mannequin in a cardinal’s vestments … towering over an altar with statues of the baby Jesus and Mother Mary." Meanwhile, a pianist plays "Amazing Grace." Sister Evangeline is a former personal cook to Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, who loaned her to the restaurant. "Cooking for God’s people has always been my calling," she says. "You just have to cook with passion, with your whole heart and prepare every dish as you would for your loved ones."

The history of kosher Coca-Cola leads back to a rabbi born in Lithuania in 1870, who landed in Atlanta in 1910, reports Samuel G. Freedman in the New York Times (4/23/11). Rabbi Tuvia Geffen understood the importance of kosher Coke, especially in the American South. "To not drink Coca-Cola was certainly to be considered un-American," says Marcie Cohen Ferris of the University of North Carolina. Rather than simply melt into the melting pot, Rabbi Geffen had "the majority address the distinct needs of a minority."

Already prominent for establishing Atlanta’s first Hebrew school, defending Leo Frank and urging his congregants "not to flee the South in fear," he approached Coca-Cola at the request of other local rabbis. He knew it was unlikely that many Jews would give up drinking Coke, kosher or not, and gained access to the beverage’s secret formula via "Harold Hersch, a Jewish Atlantan who was Coca-Cola’s corporate lawyer." This was 1935, and Rabbi Geffen’s resulting "rabbinical ruling, known in Hebrew as a teshuva, remains the standard."

Rabbi Geffen identified "the elements that rendered Coke nonkosher during the bulk of the year (oil of glycerine derived from beef tallow) and specifically during Passover (a corn derivative)." His remedies were simple: Replace the glycerine with "coconut or cotton-seed oils, and the corn derivative by cane or beet sugars." Kosher Coke, flagged by a "yellow cap bearing the orthodox Union’s certification," has since become a cross-denominational hit, owing to the "throwback flavor" of cane or beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn-syrup. Other brands, including Pepsi, Dannon and Lipton have since followed Coke’s lead into the kosher market.

Mindful of the ground-zero mosque controversy, the New York Hall of Science is hosting a tribute to Islamic innovation, reports Clyde Haberman in the New York Times (12/7/10). The exhibit, called 1001 Inventions, is not, in fact, a response to the mosque controversy; it has been in the works for some 20 years, well before Nine-Eleven. But there’s no denying that shining a light on the Muslim world as "an incubator for scientific ideas" might stir controversy, particularly in New York City.

The exhibit’s creator, Salim T.S. al-Hassani, says he understands this. "We can’t be isolated from the sociopolitical environment," he says. But at the same time, "some of history’s finest scientists and scholars once emerged from predominantly Muslim societies, extending from Spain to China across a long stretch of time that began in the seventh century." This was a period known in the West as the Dark Ages, "after the heydays of Greece and Rome." Most people think nothing happened until the Renaissance, but that isn’t so.

For example, the exhibit features "innovations in surgery around AD 1000 by an Arab physician .. the founding of a university in the ninth century by a woman … an attempt at flight with a set of wings by a ninth-century thinker … and insights into how vision works by a 10th century polymath." It includes "long ago advances by Islamic thinkers" in a wide range of areas. As Dr. Hassani notes, these discoveries by Islamic societies led the way to the Renaissance by providing "the continuity, the smooth graph, of how ideas travel in humanity." 1001 Inventions runs through April 24th, 2011 (link).

The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has a problem with yoga as it relates to Christianity, reports Stephen Prothero in the Wall Street Journal (10/22/10). R. Albert Mohler says that Christians "must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga." More specifically, he says: "The idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine … that’s just not Christianity."

He continues: "Yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions … The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine." But Stephen Prothero, a Boston University professor and author of God Is Not One, disagrees, noting that Catholics "have long seen the seven sacraments … all of which by definition operate on the body — as vehicles of grace." Protestants, meanwhile, "have typically affirmed the sacramental nature of baptism and Holy Communion."

He writes: "There is no bending or twisting in these rites, but in both Protestants traditionally see the human body as a means of connecting oneself to the divine … So it is not quite right to conclude that, while Hindu yogis get to the divine through the body, Christian believers get to the divine only through the spirit." For those who remain uncomfortable with this, he suggests looking into "recent innovations such as ‘Praise Moves‘ — ‘the Christian alternative to yoga,’" which attempts "to bend yoga toward Christian ends."

Because "old bad words have lost much of their meaning," Jan Morris thinks we need a dose of cursing two-point-oh (The Wall Street Journal, 10/13/10). "Blasphemy … means little today," she writes. "A religious reference used to give a curse or an oath extra authenticity, but today most of us don’t for a moment hesitate to take the name of God in vain, and anyway most of the sacred content was long ago elided into the language."

For example: "How many of us, when we use the grand old expletive ‘bloody,’ recall that we are invoking (‘by our Lady’), the mother of Christ? … When a Welsch-speaker exclaims ‘Godacia!’ — his equivalent of ‘Damn!’ — he little realizes he is echoing the old English curse, ‘God ache you!’" As religious curses lost their punch, dirty words based on s-x went on the rise. But, as Jan observes, "By now the ‘F’ word has become so commonplace throughout the English-speaking world that one does not even notice it."

She continues: "What we need now, if the tradition is to be revived, is a glossary of bad language based upon contemporary obsessions, and in particular upon the universal influences of our time … We need some cyber-swearing, some reality expletives, to reflect these changes. ‘Blog off,’ perhaps. Or ‘Up your USB!’ Or ‘What a load of apping, synching, twittering b–wls.’" Hm, whatever that means. Somehow that’s not as satisfying as saying, "Son of a mother duck."

What would Jesus do? He would use irony and exaggeration, reports Paul Vitello in the New York Times ( 10/9/10). The Bible passage in question is the one in which Jesus says, "If anyone sues you to take your coat, let him have your cloak also." The Rev. Dr. Josephine C. Cameron cited this in a sermon, and dramatized her point by "ripping a shawl from her shoulders." She then explained, that, in Jesus’ day, giving up your coat and cloak "would have left most people" with nothing on at all.

This was a "wry point that his contemporary audience would have appreciated, but that is now lost on most Christians." Rev. Cameron’s congregants didn’t see the humor, and so she looked for advice from the Rev. Susan Sparks, a minister and comedian who coaches the clergy in a workshop called "Humor in Ministry." Rev. Sparks didn’t offer a punchline, advising Rev. Cameron to open a discussion about it instead. Her course, which she teaches with another part-time comic, Rabbi Bob A. Alper, explores "the theological underpinnings of religion and humor .. and the rhetoric of being funny."

"Being a comedian and being a minister are basically about the same thing, which is making people feel less alone," says Rev. Sparks. "I think of it as a rhetorical tool that can reach people in a way that no other rhetorical tool can reach them." She and Rabbi Alper offer general comedic guidelines, but her best advice is this: "If you make them laugh, you will never have a problem." She adds: "And remember, no matter how successful you are in life, no matter how many accolades you receive in this world, the number of people who show up for your funeral will always depend on the weather."

Younger, wealthier Muslims are changing the face of the food business in France, reports Max Colchester in the Wall Street Journal (9/8/10). "Until recently, most major retailers viewed Muslims as exotic customers," says Abbas Bendali of Solis, a consulting firm. "Now they are realizing they consume like other French people and they are catering to them." Indeed, France is home to more than six million Muslims and sales of halal products, which are "prepared following religious rules."

Nestle is among those riding this trend. "Here it isn’t about food which reminds people of their homeland," says Bruno El Kasri, of Nestle. "It’s about local food which is compatible with their religion." Fouad Darraz, 30, is among those who appreciate the effort: "Finding good halal food can be difficult," he says. "That’s because basically I don’t want North African food, I just want a pizza." Nestle is introducing "five or six new halal products next year, adding to a line that already includes soups and chicken sausages."

A new supermarket in Paris called Hal’shop meanwhile "stocks frozen Chinese food, lasagna and foie gras." Group Casino, a supermarket chain, has its own brand of halal products called Wassilla and Financiere Quick is opening 14 fast-food restaurants serving halal "hamburgers, chicken nuggets and salads." All of this is not without controversy: The mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois sent Financiere Quick a letter "saying it was discriminating against non-Muslim customers." And some food companies stopped advertising their halal offerings after bloggers accused them "of funding Islamic extremists."

The Pilgrims were at least as much about commerce and geopolitics as religious freedom, suggests Russell Shorto in a New York Times review of Making Haste from Babylon, by Nick Bunker (5/23/10). True enough, the Pilgrims — known in their day as Separatists or Brownists — sought "separation from the Puritan Protestantism that had rooted itself in England."

But their "voyage to America was a business venture whose backers — few of them very religious — expected a return on their investment." At the center of the enterprise was "the North American beaver. In the 1620s, a single beaver pelt fetched the same amount of money required to rent nine acres of English farmland for a year. For a time, the Pilgrims capitalized on that raw material: in the 1630s, they shipped 2,000 beaver pelts to England."

The Mayflower’s journey itself also might not have happened had not King James I been persuaded that England needed a presence in America to "challenge Spanish control of the western ocean" along with supplies from New England to support the effort. As for the Thanksgiving myth, Nick believes the holiday’s origin was a prayer of thanks based in Jewish ritual called birkat ha-Gomel, said by the Pilgrims when they landed, and not the feast that took place a year later.