Happy? Then you’re in a minority. Most of us are pretty depressed. Or at least, that seems to be the premise of Faith in the Future, a brand-new report by Christian MPs published by the think-tank Theos. They ask why, despite being richer, we are more miserable now than in poorer, more disease-ridden epochs.
Our bookshops, claims the report, are stuffed with guides to increasing our happiness, packaging happiness as a mystery - “Stumbling on Happiness,” the “Happiness Hypothesis” or satire (surely?) “Happiness: the Science behind your Smile”. The solution the MPs suggest – not one for the out-and-out hedonists I’m afraid – is bringing back values. The lack – yes we’ve heard it before – is what causes current misery. They suggest five core “life-changing” principles which will increase the sum of our general happiness.
Here’s their list:
- Does my action encourage people to develop positive relationships in their families and communities?
- Is my action socially and globally responsible?
- Does my action promote a climate of trust and hope?
- Does my action promote self-esteem and respect for others?
- Does my action encourage people to fulfil their god-given potential?
Applied to major decisions, whether taken by Government, charities, businesses, or faith organisations, these values, argue Theos, would transform society and the general sense of well-being. While happiness is usually perceived as the choice of an individual, the common theme to the Theos report is that we are defined by our relationships with God and with other people. Relationships, they say, are what makes the most difference to whether or not we are happy. The argument, if I've got this right is that we may be richer but we are also more isolated from each other than ever before, and this isolation is often a recipe for misery. So, we live in material wealth but spiritual/relational poverty. Hmm.
Interesting thought, whether or not you buy the conclusions. Are values the key to happiness?
For more on the report click here
http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/MPs_launch_Faith_in_the_Future_report.aspx?ArticleID=2088&PageID=14&RefPageID=5
Just in case you missed that wonderful story about retired priests and nuns in an Australian old people's home learning to fence with rapiers,, here is another report with lots more pictures. On the left,Sister Delores Kirby takes on an opponent like Zorro in a wimple, and below is evidence that Zimmer frames need be no impediment...
 Taj-al-Din-al- Hilali, the noisy Muslim cleric who lost his job as mufti of Australia after saying that scantily clad women were 'uncovered meat' and prey to men (but who still runs Australia's biggest mosque) has now written a book in which he says Christian - as well as Muslim - women should wear veils over their provocative hair. He points to Biblical verses about veils and says "“The veil upholds the modesty and protects the dignity of women,
whether Muslim or non-Muslim,...Wearing the veil creates the
most realistic similarity with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ.”
Who nobody has evern seen or photographed. But here are some images collected by marypages.com. Note that in the prime Queen of Heaven picture there is plenty of hair. What is wrong with these men?
 A disturbing story from Yemen, via AFP reports, but by no means a unique case. A court has granted a divorce to Nojud Ali, a girl of eight. Her unemployed father forced her into an arranged marriage because his elder daughter had been abducted. 28 year old Faez Ali Thameur was the husband, and says he married her 'with her consent and her parents'', and she signed a marriage contract saying - as is customary - that she would remain in her father's house until she was eighteen. But she was taken to his house a week later; and in response to a question from Judge Mohammed al-Qadhi, Thameur acknowledged that the "marriage was consummated, but I did not beat her."
Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, has no law governing the minimum age of marriage. Campaigners are working towards setting one up. Meanwhile the child says she is glad to be divorced, because now she can go back to school.
Quite apart from the sexual exploitation Unicef condemns Child marriage as " a violation of human rights, compromising the development of girls and often resulting in early pregnancy and social isolation."
 The Chicago Sun-Times tells us that a new university course for psychotherapists - "A Biblical Approach to Mental Health" - says that the Bible is better than Greek myths (Oedipus complex, etc) as a model for therapy - because Bible stories 'tend to end on a note of hope rather than despair.'
Fine until you get to the destruction of Sodom and Lot's wife. Psychs are always telling us to look back..Mrs Lot did, and you know what happened to her.
If you don't, click here. Or look left.
 Not since the cowled and hooded horror-monks of 18c Gothic novels has there been such fictional excitement over sinister Catholic plots. No sooner has the dire Da Vinci code begun to flag than an interesting novel comes over from Italy this week - Imprimatur, by two Italian novelists who say they have established beyond doubt that Pope Innocent XI bankrolled the invasion of England by William of Orange; leading to the downfall of James II and the (Catholic) Stuarts, the triumph of the Protestants, and the end of Catholicism as a force in English politics. Which would be a bit of an own goal.
The Catholic Encyclopaedia online mentions and discards the story about William of Orange, but he does seem to be a very political Pope indeed, with a finger in plenty of other resistances and invasions. But in Italy, the claim has caused such outrage that the authors, Monaldi & Sorti, are hardly able to market the book within Italy. The Independent says it is on the "informal but irresistible orders of the Catholic Church." Which is attractively un-disprovable...
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has given a long interview to BBC television saying that the breakdown of marriage is'one of the greatest evils of our day'. Meanwhile, an interesting New Statesman article anatomizes how Iran is catching up with western sexual mores by reviving the idea of 'muta' marriage: a binding contract, but a temporary one...
A long, chilling interview in the Observer today with the father of a 17 year old Iraqi girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, who he choked, stamped and beat to death in Basra. Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant and says the police backed his actions.
'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion..'I don't have a daughter now, and I prefer to say that I never had one. That girl humiliated me in front of my family and friends"
Just note that last sentence. It's not about Islam (sane Muslims agree that the Qu'ran forbids such murders). It's not about Islam but it's all about him. It is uncivilized, irreligious, psychopathic nonsense. A fathers who murders his daughter because her even smiling at another man "humiliates" him personally is no better than Josef Fritzl. But read the interview. It's a window into hell.
 Cardinal Cormac Murphy O"Connor's speech on Friday is worth reading in full on the Catholic website. THe interesting thing is that he speaks up for mystery against literalism, an unpopular view in this scientific age , and a view promptly rubbished by Professor Dawkins, never slow with a quote. The Cardinal also speaks aganst religious arrogance about its "truths" and asks believers to respect unbelievers:
""If Christians really believed in the mystery of God, we would realise that proper talk about God is always difficult, always tentative.
I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe."
It had an echo for me, of a poem in "The Silence at the Song's End", the book written by my late son Nicholas Heiney, an 18 year old's rage against bossy centralized religiosity:
"The church, the charms,
The chanting psalms
Perhaps the church has missed
The strength of every living God
In every Atheist?"
An extraordinary story from the BBC's South Asia service. In Tamil Nadu state, in a village called Uthapurum, there has for some time been a wall - a physical wall, part of it electrified - to segregage higher caste Hindus from Dalits, the "untouchables". Now the wall has been partly demolished, and some 800 high-caste Hindus are threatening to leave the village because it leaves them open to attacks from "antisocial elements'. An interesting and humane discussion of the matter in The Hindu newspaper.
Before we get all superior, though, let us remember that from 1934 to 1959 in Oxford, the famous "Cutteslowe Wall" stood - put up by a developer, across a road, to stop council tenants invading the space of private owners..here it is. In all its dubious glory.
The Catholic Church has instructed local clergy - especially in Salt Lake City and thereabouts - to refrain from opening their archives to those who often request information through the Genealogical Society of Utah. The reason is to avoid a practice "which violates the privacy of individuals and, in addition, would involve cooperation in the erroneous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
And what are these practices? The belief that one's ancestors can be saved through “posthumous baptism.” Look at the Genealogical Society's own site and you find it in the small print:
"....through religious rites performed in holy temples, husbands and wives, parents and children can receive the promise that they can be united forever-even after death. They believe that temple blessings are available to those that have died as well as those who are now living. Thus, members of the Church fill strongly motivated to seek information about their deceased ancestors and participate in temple rites in their behalf. They believe that those who are dead retain their identity and free will and therefore can either accept or reject the rites performed for them."
Spooky. But on the other hand, surely you have a right to your family tree, whatever mad ceremonies you propose to carry out round great-grandad's name?
This happened over a year ago but has just been picked up by the world opera blog; it was first recorded from local press by the blogger 'panda's thumb'. (" the legendary virtual bar serving the community of the legendary virtual University of Ediacara somewhere in the Ediacaran hills of southern Australia,...a weblog giving another voice for the defenders of the integrity of science')
The story is depressing enough: an elementary school teacher in Bennett, Colorado,was suspended for showing her class a 12-min portion of the opera Faust, according to reports in the Rocky Mountain News. Tresa Waggoner, showed part of a charming Joan Sutherland video which uses sock puppets to engage children. The opera was Faust. Parents accused Ms. Waggoner of devil worship and lesbianism. Ms. Waggoner, herself an opera singer, describes herself as a Christian and has two children. She was, however, explaining ”trouser roles” in opera. (In Faust , a young man in love with Marguerite is played by a soprano.)
It is all oddly reminiscent of the occurrence in Orwell's A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER when a teacher is pilloried for reading Macbeth with the children; not because of the violence but because of the line about Macduff being "from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd". The word 'womb' caused parental panic. On the bright side, the mayor of Bennett reportedly resigned over the incident , saying that the town has a ”mean streak” that she can no longer tolerate.
 This is a church. It has a large roof, as churches do. And on top of the depressing figures on modern British church attendance, it has another problem. If God won't solve it, Ofwat must. The BBC on Teeside reports that the water authorities are changing the way buildings are billed for 'runoff' drainage - currently churches and charities are exempt, and ones like St Lukes in Thornaby only pay abouut £ 70. Now the Northumbrian water authorities plan to charge them as if they were commercial buildings of similar size. From 2010 they will pay 9 times more.
From Scotland a similar panic - with a case being made that churches, which are often used for meetings and charitable work as well as worship - should simply not be charged as if they were multinational banks in city centres. It'll be interesting to see whether Scotland solves the problem before England does; and what the Scottish-led Westminster government sees fit to do about that.
 The anti-Darwinian creationists get angry at the idea we evolved from apes, rather than turning up fully human in Eden. Now, however, the Vatican attempts a theological resolution of the conflict. CNS reports on an Osservatore article by the biologist Fiorenzo Facchini, saying that apes DID evolve (as we know) into pre-human creatures but that God then humanized them. " "when the biological conditions necessary for supporting a being capable of reflective thought were attained, the will of God, the creator, freely desired it, and man came to be....at some point God willed a spark of intelligence to light up in the mind of a nonhuman hominid and thus came into existence the human ". The scientist says that this idea of divine intervention "does not represent an unwarranted intrusion (of theology) in the field of science -- as is the case with intelligent design -- but is called for in order to explain the presence of man's spirit" which cannot come from or evolve out of the material world. This is hardly a new idea among intelligent believers, but nicely put. Here a happy pro-science blogger headlines this interesting article as "NOT ALL CHRISTIANS NEED TO LIE ABOUT SCIENCE".
 Pope Benedict is going to txt mssg thousands of young Catholics during World Youth Day in Sydney in July. The messages will be of 'inspiration and hope" to what Bishop Fish calls 'tech-savvy youth'. I bet he spells things out properly, the Pope. None of your OnWRD Xtn SLdrs, or Gd lvsU OK?
However, nothing new in religious txting. This site kindly offers numerous specimen messages (If evr u get tired, tell Jesus, He’ll take d fight & win with u!). An obliging blogger lists devotional phones available worldwide: holy hip-hop ringtones , calls to prayer programmed for Muslims, and the rather pleasing concept of a kosher phone, which does not do texts or internet but just voice calls, to avoid stupid distractions. But here's a cautionary tale for Muslims:
In the Maldives, according to the Atoll Times and the pleasingly named Minivan News, nervousness about terrorism is so rife that police raided the home of a 16 year old boy at 4 15 am because his mobile had been sending verses from the Koran and prayers to friends on other islands. "Fight the leaders of unbelief" etc. The boy was not arrested but the house was searched and an extractor fan examined. Keep to the gentler verses when texting. You know it makes sense. If the Pope starts sending Fgt the Gd Fgt or that one about "Are we not thy chosen soldiers?" he could find his extractor fan being confiscated.
This is an Alevi prayer ceremony in Istanbul, this spring. The Alevi - a large religious minority - are in conflict with the government over compulsory religious education. the ruling and strongly Islamic AK party, Reuters report, lump them together with Sunni Muslims and teach them the mandatory RE curriculum on how to pray, fasts, etc. But Alevis are significantly different, and a mother took the ministry to court to win permission to pull her son out of the classes and to have Alevis recognized in the curriculum. The case was won, but the government claims the constitution prevents them doing anything.
Alevis are fascinating. Their worship is full of dance and music; men and women pray side by side, as equals. Strong principles, described in this interesting blog, include tolerance and work "The greatest act of worship is to work"" echoes St Benedict's "laborare est orare". Mainstream Muslims express views, says the correspondent, ranging from
“An Alevi is a filthy, immoral person who is so far from religion that he must first become a Christian before he can become a Muslim.”
to
“Alevism is the original, true essence of Islam.”
to
“Alevism is an example of the classic Marxist struggle by an oppressed minority.”
or
“Alevism is a mixture of the best elements of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Shamanism, and 20th century humanism.”
 How far is it the role of senior churchmen to censor television in a free society? In Australia, the Roman Catholic diocese of Adelaide has demanded that Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares be taken off air or screened much later, because of his swearing. Particularly when he called a chef a 'French pig' (should have said 'cochon', perhaps). "There can be no excuse for vilification of this sort. We conclude that this episode should never have been aired on Australian television," they say. Reuters mischievously point out that only a year ago Britain banned an Australian tourism advert (a rather good one) for saying "Where the bloody hell are you?". .
The great God Internet bubble rises and rises...Religion is probably as big as pornography on the net, if not bigger. Godtube - the minivideo site for the religiously minded - has raised $30 million at a $150 million valuation from GLG Partners, a hedge fund. The site started with $ 300 and last September became one of the top thousand sites worldwide. Its mission statement, incidentally, is strict: it gives a platform, so it claims, only to socially responsible faith-based organizations,....Representing Baptist, Catholic, Episcopal, Evangelical, Messianic, Methodist and all of the traditional Christian denominations... Security and moral integrity are exceptionally important to the family at GodTube, and we take great pains to protect you and your loved ones. GodTube is family-friendly and is great for all Christians alike, including Christian children.'
If you missed the great Times feature about the Louisiana maximum security prison transformed by a rodeo-loving officer, read it here. But note that Officer Cain is a fervent Christian, who believes he was sent to Angola jail "to do God's work...He has turned Angola into a place where families with young children happily consort with convicted killers at the spring and autumn rodeos. He has brought hope where there was only despair." Give fervour credit where it's due.
The Economist has a strong piece about the continuing difficulty of being a woman and a full human being in Saudi Arabia - Human Rights Watch reports that "the imposition of male guardianship over adult women..(means that)...half the kingdom's citizens are treated in effect like children or the mentally ill for the duration of their lives. Worse, the guardianship policy creates a paradox: women may be held legally responsible for a crime, even though they are not deemed to have full legal capacity".
On a slightly lighter note, the latest punishment laid down by the governor in the northern al-Jof region is that men who flirt with women in public places will have their hair forcibly cut.  So, not a good holiday destination for that irritating sex-obsessed hairball Russell Brand, then...
Libby Purves is a Times columnist, novelist and Radio 4 broadcaster. Her interest in the glories, inspirations and eccentricities of world religions and cultural traditions was fuelled by an upbringing in Bangkok, Israel, Africa, France and a series of convent schools. Bess Twiston Davies works for the Times Register section and is a regular contributor to the Faith page and Times Online. She studied Hispanic studies and English at Sheffield University and has a journalism diploma from The Robert Schuman Institute, Angers, France. Contact Libby or Bess at: faithcentral@timesonline.co.ukYou might also enjoy Articles of Faith, Ruth Gledhill's wonderful blog about religious affairs.
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