Right now, of course, especially in the less than under 70 days until the next U.S. presidential election, people are watching political trends across the United States. I am as well. But today my Another Voice focus is about U.S. religious trends.

For many years, my academic and professional focus has been religion and values in U.S. society. As a contemporary U.S. American, I try to be very attentive to trends and developments. I pay especially close attention to publications from two research organizations: the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world; and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a U.S. nonpartisan research and education organization also in Washington, D.C., that provides information about religious, political, and social issues for all 50 states. And of course, I am in regular contact with many U.S. colleagues and researchers.

The Pew Research Center and PRRI point to the following contemporary U.S. religion and values trends.

(1)        The religiously “unaffiliated” — also called “nones” – form the only major religious category experiencing growth in the United States. Around one-quarter of U.S. Americans (26%) identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2023.

(2)        The U.S. Catholic loss in membership, continues to be the highest membership decline among major religious groups. Catholics continue to lose more members than they gain.

(3)        White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants, however, also continue losing more members than they replace.

(4)        Since 2023, white evangelical Protestants, on the other hand, have one of the highest retention rates of all U.S. religious groups (76%).

(5)        Black Protestants (82%) and Jewish Americans (77%) enjoy the highest retention rates of all U.S. religious groups.

(6)        Most unaffiliated U.S. adults today are not looking for a new religious or spiritual home. The vast majority of the religiously unaffiliated appear content to stay that way. Only 9% of religiously unaffiliated Americans say the statement “I am looking for a religion that would be right for me” currently describes them very or somewhat well.

(7)        Currently 24% of U.S. Americans attended religious services, either virtually or in person, at least once a week, a 7-percentage point decline from 31% in 2013. Two decades ago, an average of 42% of U.S. adults attended religious services every week.

I have always been intrigued by generational differences. I am especially interested in the religious values and social views of Generation Z and their impact on Generation Alpha. But it would be helpful, first, to understand who belongs to the various generations and what characterizes them.

 

People laugh when I say I belong to the “Silent Generation,” but the generational categories look like this:

–        Silent Generation – People born 1928 to 1945

–        Baby Boom Generation – People born 1946 to 1964

–        Generation X – People born 1965 to 1980

–        Generation Y – People born 1981 to 1996

–        Generation Z – People born 1997 to 2010

–        Generation Alpha – People born 2010 to 2024

Now a bit of explanation…

THE SILENT GENERATION:

     The Silent Generation were children of the Great Depression, whose parents had enjoyed living in the Roaring Twenties. But before reaching their teens, the Silent Generation shared with their parents the horrors of World War II. Many lost their fathers or older siblings who died in the war. They saw the fall of Nazism but also the catastrophic devastation made capable by nuclear bombs. The Silent Generation focused on “working within the system.” They did this by keeping their heads down and working hard, thus earning for themselves the “silent” label. Religion was especially important for the Silent Generation. Speaking extemporaneously on December 22, 1952, a month before his inauguration, President Dwight Eisenhower (1890 – 1969) said: “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” In 1955, the Jewish theologian and sociologist Will Herberg (1906 – 1977) published Protestant, Catholic, Jew. He argued that the United States had become a “three religion country,” where religious commitments mattered more than ethnic ones, and that, despite irreconcilable religious differences, U.S. Americans together formed a kind of U.S. “common religion.” On July 30, 1956, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution declaring ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ the national motto of the United States.

BABY BOOM GENERATION:

     In Europe and North America, many boomers came of age in a time of increasing affluence and widespread government subsidies in postwar housing and education. They grew up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time. The United States was in the midst of social, religious, and political upheaval when the Baby Boomers were reaching young adulthood. The Baby Boomers were the last generation to be routinely baptized, confirmed and taken regularly to mainstream religious activities.

GENERATION X:

     As children in the 1970s and 1980s, a time of shifting societal values, Generation X has called the “latchkey generation” stemming from their returning as children from school to an empty home and needing to use a key to let themselves in. This was a result of what “free-range parenting,” plus increasing divorce rates, and increased maternal participation in the workforce. Video games were also a major part of juvenile entertainment for the first time. In their midlife during the early 21st century, research describes Generation X as active, happy, and achieving a productive work–life balance. According to Pew Research, 70% of Generation X identify as Christian. Only 7% are atheists/agnostics, but 23% identify as “nones.”

GENERATION Y:

     Members of this demographic cohort are known as Millennials because the oldest became adults around the turn of the millennium. Generation Y has proven to be incredibly community-oriented and environmentally conscious. They are leading the movement in helping gender non-conforming kids to be happy with who they are. They are taking a freer approach to parenting, allowing their children to explore and create without constant structure or supervision. Generation Y, the “Millennials,” are the ‘spiritual but not religious’ generation. I recommend the fascinating 2019 book edited by Justine Afra Huxley Generation Y, Spirituality and Social Change. (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Philadelphia)

GENERATION Z:

    Following Generation Y, Generation Z is the first social generation to have grown up with access to the Internet and portable digital technology from an early age. Generation Z teenagers are more concerned than older generations with academic performance and job prospects and are better at delaying gratification than their counterparts from the 1960s. Two-thirds of Generation Zers are somewhat religious, but this includes 10% who identify as white evangelical Protestants, followed by 9% Hispanic Catholic, 8% white mainline/non-evangelical Protestant, 7% Black Protestant, 7% white Catholic, and 6% Hispanic Protestant. They are the first generation in history in which the “nones” clearly outnumber the Christians. The parents of millennials and Generation Z young people did less to encourage regular participation in formal worship services and typical religious behaviors in their children than did earlier generations. Many religious activities that were once common, such as saying grace before meals, became more the exception than the norm.

GENERATION ALPHA:

     Generation Alpha is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Named after alpha, the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century and the third millennium. Generation Alpha people were born at a time of falling fertility rates across much of the world and experienced the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as young children.

When I think about Generation Alpha, I am not pessimistic but appreciate the observation of my favorite poet T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965): “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” For Christian pastoral leaders, Generation Alpha will be the great challenge to speak meaningfully about beliefs, values, and Christian life experience. More about that next week.

–        Jack

 

Dr. John Alonzo Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

In the past few months, I have picked up several new readers. I am very happy about that of course. Many have asked me to explain my focus on “historical theology.” People who have been with me for a few years, please bear with me if I am repeating some earlier explanations. I do try to update even old explanations.

Describing myself I would say I am an “historical critical theologian.” To understand what I mean, one needs to think about what we call “historical criticism.”

HISTORICAL CRITICISM:

        Historical criticism began in the 17th century and gained popular recognition in the 19th and 20th centuries. The primary goal of historical criticism has been to discover a text’s original meaning in its original historical context. This requires examining the historical context of the author and of those for whom the text was written.

When examining a text, questions arise. Is the text describing an actual historical event or using symbols and creative images to describe a mythological or presumed historic event? The account about Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, is a good example. Nearly every ancient culture told its own set of creation myths, and they share a remarkable number of similarities, including key elements of the Adam and Eve story: humans fashioned from clay, a trickster figure who subverts the gods’ plans for creation, and a woman taking the blame for sin and pain.

Another good example of creative biblical imagery about an actual historic person is found in the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. The Catholic biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown (1928 – 1998), in his book The Birth of the Messiah, stresses that the Infancy Narratives are imaginative literary products, created by the early Christian community primarily to express its belief about the historic Jesus as “Son of God.”

HISTORICAL CRITICISM AND TRANSLATIONS

        In historical criticism, a close examination of textual translations is important as well. Are translations faithful to the original text? In my professional development, I had to learn Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. I did alright in Hebrew but excelled in Greek and Latin. I learned very early, however, that translations from one language to another can sometimes be very problematic, especially when translators use a contemporary word to translate an ancient word. A good example – there are many actually — is the way biblical translators have translated Pontius Pilate’s inscription on Jesus’ cross.

The famous INRI is an abbreviation for the Latin words Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum. (The letter “J” did not exist back then. It wasn’t invented until 1524 thanks to Gian Giorgio Trissino, an Italian Renaissance grammarian.) The word Iudaeorum means “of the Judeans.” However, it has too often been incorrectly translated as “of the Jews.” And so, we have inherited the absolutely erroneous translation which has greatly contributed to ignorance and antisemitism. The word “Jew,” did not enter the English language until the twelfth century. There were no “Jews” in the first century. The religion was the Hebrew religion. In the Bible we find Hebrews, Israelites, and Judeans, but never “Jews.” The correct translation is “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Judeans.” The historical Jesus (Iēsous in Greek and Iesus in Latin) was a Hebrew. His Hebrew name was Yeshua, which is a derivative from the Hebrew verb meaning “to rescue” or “to deliver.”

FAITH IS AN EXPERIENCE:

        Historical critical theologians focus on interpretations of faith. Faith is an experience. In the faith experience people have an experience of the Divine, often described under various names: God, Creator, Father, Mother, Allah, the Ground of Being, etc. To be open to the faith experience, we need quiet and reflective time. Faith and belief are not the same thing.

BELIEF:

        Belief is the attempt to put into words the meaning of our faith experience. Belief is really theology which is “faith seeking understanding.” Theological understandings – statements of belief — can end up as official teachings (doctrines) when religious institutional leadership judges them useful guidelines for Christian life. But it is important to remember that all doctrinal statements are time-bound, because language and understandings are time-bound. All doctrinal statements therefore are provisional until a better expression comes along.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION TODAY:

(1) I suggest first of all that we think of “church” not as an institution but as a community of faith-experiencing believers. What is happening within your own community of believers? What are the key issues and concerns? What does it mean for you and for your friends to experience God today? Where do you and they find your support?

 (2) In the first three centuries of Christianity, we have no direct evidence of what would later be called an ordination ceremony. The historical Jesus did not ordain anyone at the Last Supper. He probably had no understanding of ordination. By the end of the third century, however, Christianity had a clear organizational structure headed by presbyters, from the Greek word for “elder” presbyteros; supervisor-overseers, called epískopoi in Greek; and deacons. (In the tenth century, our English word “bishop” evolved from the Latin word episcopus.)

(3) Initiation into the three orders was accomplished through a rite of ordination that inducted a person into a local office in a particular community. Ordination was introduced as a kind of quality control to assure communities that the women and men who were their leaders were trustworthy and faith-filled leaders. As my theological mentor, Edward Schillebeeckx (1914 to 2009), often said, “You led the liturgy because you were the leader of the people. You didn’t lead the liturgy because you were ordained to have the power of consecration.” (Prof. Schillebeeckx had a big impact on my life. Unlike other theologians, he did not view this modern world, with its secularization, as a loss or threat. On the contrary, he saw in it as a new opportunity to live Christianity authentically, creatively, and meaningfully today.)

 (4) Let’s scratch our heads about new forms of ministry and break out of the old patterns and paradigms. I have often thought over the years that many of my theology graduate students, regardless of sex or gender, would make excellent ministers in the university parish. Why not be creative with ordination. If ordination is desired, could it not be for say five years, with possibility of renewal for a few more years? Does it have to be life-long? Why not divide local parishes into neighborhood communities under several part-time ordained ministers, who are also professional people in the larger community, doctors, teachers, electricians, etc. How about electing bishops for a limited ministerial term office? Say five years and a renewal of a second five-year term possible after a positive performance appraisal.

(5) Healthy Christianity is rooted in being a healthy follower of the Way of Jesus. So, what does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ today? Early Christians understood Jesus as the revelation of God’s graciousness and love. And they understood that Incarnation involves all of us. As Jesus says in Luke 10:16, “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Our humanity is anchored in divinity, whether people realize it or not.

(6) We need to change our conversation. Changing the conversation means moving from lots of talk and talk to making lots of real changes. We need to be creative and courageous change agents, realizing that change rarely comes from the top. In my Catholic tradition, for example, change usually starts at the grassroots level. People see the need and make the change. The old pattern is proven historically: (1) change is made; (2) change is condemned by church leadership; (3) change endures; (4) leadership allows the change as a limited “experiment;” (5) change becomes more widespread; (6) and finally church leadership allows it as “part of our tradition.”

 …

Creative and critical reflection is not a dangerous activity, and it can be a source of life, because it brings a new focus, a new conversation, a new change, and new life. That is the focus of historical theologians. At least the historical theologians I resonate with.

– Jack

John A. Dick, Ph.D. – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

The relationship between religion and politics has been and continues to be a toxic and dangerous relationship. A key U.S. player in that relationship today is Kevin Roberts and his Heritage Foundation.

Kevin D. Roberts (born 1974) is the president of the Heritage Foundation, an activist conservative political think tank, based in Washington DC. Prior to assuming his current role, Roberts was the CEO of another conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential think tank that opposes efforts to fight climate change and receives millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests.

Roberts is the architect of Project 2025, also known as the “2025 Presidential Transition Project,” an initiative of the Heritage Foundation. It aims to promote conservative and right-wing policies to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should Donald Trump win the 2024 presidential election. It calls for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuels. It recommends abolishing the Department of Education and terminating its programs. Funding for climate research would be cut. The National Institutes of Health would be reformed along conservative principles and Medicare and Medicaid would be terminated.

The publication of a book written by Kevin D. Roberts, titled Dawn’s Early Light, and featuring a foreword by Senator JD Vance, has been delayed until after the presidential election. The book was scheduled to be published in September but will now be released in November. Roberts drew criticism recently for saying the country was in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” A Heritage Foundation spokeswoman confirmed the publication delay of the book and provided an explanatory statement from Roberts, who said: “There’s a time for writing, reading and book tours, and a time to put down the books and go fight like hell to take back our country.”

Actually Project 2025 lays out what is essentially a very conservative “Christian nationalist vision” of the United States, one in which married heterosexuality is the only valid form of sexual expression and identity. It opposes what it calls “radical gender ideology” and advocates that the government “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family”. To achieve this, it proposes ending same-sex marriage and removing protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity.

Project 2025 also recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants. It proposes employing the military for domestic law enforcement and calls for immediate capital punishment of convicted offenders.

What many observers don’t realize is that Kevin D. Roberts, the architect of Project 2025, has close ties to the Catholic organization Opus Dei (“Work of God”). Opus Dei has long attracted significant controversy. Criticism has centered on its secretiveness and support for authoritarian, right-wing governments. A still important book about Opus Dei is Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei by Robert A. Hutchison (St Martins Press, 1999). I would also recommend the still very important book by my friend Betty Clermont The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Clarity Press, 2009).

Kevin Roberts receives regular Opus Dei spiritual guidance at the Catholic Information Center, in Washington DC, headed by an Opus Dei priest. Another Opus Dei linked U.S. Catholic is Leonard Leo (born 1965), a self-declared Opus Dei operative. He is a lawyer, judicial activist, and co-chairman of the conservative legal think tank, the Federalist Society for Law and Policy. Leo has also emerged as a key architect and funder of Project 2025, backed by billions of dollars of slush fund dark money. Leo has actually created a network of influential conservative legal groups funded mostly by anonymous donors. He assisted Chief Justice Clarence Thomas in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States by a narrow Senate majority of 52 to 48. Leonard Leo also led campaigns to support the nominations of the conservative justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. All far-right Catholics except Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic but is now a member of the Episcopal Church.

Opus Dei was founded in Spain in 1928 by the Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá (1902 – 1975). Popes Pius XII (1876 – 1958), John Paul II (1920 – 2005), and Benedict XVI (1927 – 2022) were strong supporters of Opus Dei. Josemaría Escrivá was declared a saint in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, who said Escrivá should be “counted among the great witnesses of Christianity.” Well, I find it significant that Escrivá was active in bolstering the support of Fascist regimes, including that of Francisco Franco (1936 – 1975) in Spain and Augusto Pinochet (1917 – 2006) in Chile.

Although controversial, Opus Dei remains influential within the Catholic Church. Lay people make up the majority of its membership. The remainder are secular priests under the governance of a prelate (leader) elected by specific members and appointed by the Pope. Fernando Ocáriz Braña a Catholic priest born in Paris in 1944, has been the head of Opus Dei since 2017 and he is the fourth person to head Opus Dei since its founding in 1928. Two of Opus Dei’s earlier prelates were bishops appointed by Pope John Paul II. Well known in the Vatican, Ocáriz has been an advisor to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), once known as the Holy Office, since 1986.  In 2022, Pope Francis announced that the head of Opus Dei would no longer be a bishop, but he said he has very positive sentiments about Opus Dei.

As of 2023, there were 95,890 members of Opus Dei: 93,784 lay persons and 2,106 priests. The current Archbishop of Los Angeles, José Horacio Gómez (born 1951) was the first numerary member of Opus Dei to be consecrated a bishop in the United States. (A numerary member of Opus Dei is a member who takes a vow of celibacy.) Archbishop Gómez was President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2019 to 2022. Another Opus Dei bishop is John Barres (born 1960) the Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre in New York. He is a graduate of Opus Dei’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He joined Opus Dei as priest. In general, Opus Dei bishops in the United States tend not identify as members of Opus Dei because bishops have only one superior, the pope.

The British journalist and Associate Editor at Thomson Reuters, Gareth Gore, has written a new book about Opus Dei, which comes out in early October 2024: Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church (Simon & Schuster, 2024). Gore observed recently: “Like Project 2025, Opus Dei at its core is a reactionary stand against the progressive drift of society…. For decades now, the organization has thrown its resources at penetrating Washington’s political and legal elite and finally seems to have succeeded through its close association with men like Kevin Roberts and Leonard Leo.”

Well, a lot to think about. A lot of big issues underlie the 2024 U.S. presidential election, involving politics and religion. During this election year, a growing number of Catholic priests and bishops, for example, are talking politics from the pulpit. But there are positive developments as well. Bishops like John Stowe (born 1966), Bishop of the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, have criticized the Christian nationalist, un-Christlike actions of their right-wing bishop colleagues. It is hopeful as well that close to 29,000 Catholics and ecumenical allies have signed a petition from Faithful America, urging members of the U.S. bishops’ conference to refrain from involvement in the 2024 election and to withhold support for the former U.S. president now running for re-election.

I conclude this week’s reflection with a quote from Sandra Day O’Connor (1930 – 2023) who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 until her retirement in 2006. O’Connor was the first woman to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. She retired from the bench in 2006 to care for her husband, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

• Jack

 

PS:  Just to clarify, I am not anti-Catholic but a serious Catholic observer. All religious traditions, from time to time, have their positive as well as their negative movements. We need to be critical of the negative and promote the positive.

 

John A. Dick, Ph.D. — Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be

 

Researchers and writers in every discipline today are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively communicate in an environment in which findings are distorted or ignored to serve an ideological agenda. Arguments rage at school board meetings, for example, about what can and what cannot be discussed or taught, and a new report from PEN America confirms there were more than 4,000 instances of booking banning across the United States during the first half of the 2023-2024 school year.

Teachers in schools today hesitate to tackle topics like racism and socioeconomic or LGBTQ+ issues in their classrooms for fear of being targeted by conservative parents and losing their jobs.

Overwhelmingly, book banners continue to target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. But school boards today are also banning books with “uncomfortable” interpretations of reality, such as the Holocaust book Maus, the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. Surprisingly even Mark Twain’s classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been banned for racial slurs and Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, the novel about a white lawyer’s defense of a black man against a false rape charge by a white woman, has been repeatedly banned in schools.

In the current U.S. presidential election year, lying, especially for one particular candidate, seems to have become politically correct. Back in 2020, when the 45^th president launched his most audacious lie yet about his “stolen election” many commentators cited Hannah Arendt’s observations about political lying. Hannah Arendt (1906 – 1975), the German historian and philosopher became interested in how the most outrageous lies get a political hold over people, ever since Nazi lies about the Jews, Communists, and intellectuals drove her from Berlin in 1933 after her arrest by the Gestapo. She wrote, “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

Well, our contemporary world is experiencing a crisis in facts and truth, which also contributes to distrust in various political and religious institutions. Theologian John Dominic Crossan said it very well in his recent book Paul as Pharisee: A Vision of Post-civilization (Polebridge Press, 2024): “We now live—verbally and visually, nationally and internationally—in a world of smiling lies, alternative facts, fake news, aspirations masquerading as interpretations, and conspiracy theories where truth is at best a personal opinion or at worst an obsolete artifact.”

The key question is how do we know what is true and what is not true when watching the news, listening to elected officials, listening to religious leaders, or using social media? Conflicting messages bombard us every day. We saw that with the opening of the Paris Olympics on July 26^th when one performance scene portraying Dionysus, Greek god of wine, pleasure, and festivity, was widely and incorrectly reported as a mockery of Jesus’ Last Supper. Catholic leaders along with a host of other Christian groups voiced outrage following the opening ceremony.

TRUTH IS MORE THAN FEELINGS. Rather than making decisions on what is true or not true in reality (the classic model), many people today make decisions on what they feel is true or most probable. Narrow feeling perspectives replace thoughtful examination of the actual reality. In an email, for example, I asked a far-right clergyman friend why he still supports the 2024 presidential candidacy of the U.S. Republican presidential candidate. His reply was polite and brief: “I just feel that God has blessed him, and he has been chosen by God to be president again. I trust my feelings.”

TRUTH AND REALITY: The traditional answer about truth-seeking is that we know something is true if it is in accordance with measurable reality. In medieval times, however, people knew something was true because the authorities and powerful institutions, like the Catholic Church, said it was true. No discussion. Case closed. This created problems of course. Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) is a good example.

When Galileo looked through his homemade telescope and saw mountains on the moon, objects orbiting around Jupiter, and the variations of lighting on Venus — all sights not in line with authoritative teaching — he decided to speak out. He was condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, narrowly escaped being executed as a heretic, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Galileo courageously argued for a new way of knowing, insisting that what mattered was not what the authorities said was true but what anyone with the right tools could discover and show was true, based on reality. He made the case for modern science.

Truth is found in the quest for facts not in dogmatic teaching.

TRUTH AND PERSONAL OPINION: One of my hobbies is genealogy. But I learned very quickly a few years ago that a lot of “family history” is undocumented folklore. I decided to not post anything on my family history website unless I had documentation. My paternal grandmother, for example, lived many years near our family home in SW Michigan. I was present when she died in 1960 in Michigan. I was present at her Michigan funeral. I posted the information about my grandmother’s death and funeral on my family history website. I got an immediate reaction from a distant “cousin” who disagreed with me. He told me he disagreed with my “opinion” about my grandmother because he was “certain” she had never lived in Michigan and had only lived in Indiana and had died there. I politely wrote back that I was there in Michigan when these events happened in Michigan, and I could document everything. He quickly wrote back: “Thanks again for your opinion.”

ACTUALLY, WE ARE ALL ON A TRUTH JOURNEY: Our destination is Ultimate Truth. In the meantime, we pursue smaller truths. We observe, we make educated judgments, and then we act and speak out, always open to new discoveries and insights.

Here, below, are my suggestions for truth-seeking and truth-speaking:

(1)  A helpful tool today, when checking the accuracy of what one finds on social media and news websites is “Snopes.com.” Founded in 1994, Snopes is a reliable resource to research and debunk urban legends, fake pictures, etc. I use it to check Facebook observations. Another helpful website is “FactCheck.org.” It is very helpful checking news reports about the positions and statements of current political candidates. I use both to check the veracity of Facebook reports.

(2) We are not expected to have all the answers on our own. As we look for truth, we can turn to trusted sources for guidance. That may mean a trusted mentor, a well-informed friend, an insightful public figure respected for her or his integrity, or a respected book using primary source material. We need trustworthy speakers. They need our support and collaboration.

(3) When truth becomes simply a personal or a group fabrication, the understanding of reality is turned upside down. Discrimination and cruelty become the norm and compassion disappears. Extremist websites and groups gather more supporters. Self-advancement at any cost becomes the new virtue, and self-advancement today is politically very “in.”

(4) When truth becomes simply a personal or group fabrication, God can become part of that fabrication, becoming a religious figure who condones and blesses liars and tyrants. Far removed from Jesus of Nazareth who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)

(5) We have a responsibility to be not just truth-seekers but courageous truth-speakers.

•  Jack

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be