OK, this is a little melodramatic and contrived, but it is a question I was asked at an interreligious lecture, and I believe that this question reveals a lot about one’s religious vision. So I would like to hear from our readers and from the other bloggers how you would answer this question:

You and a companion are lost in the Sahara desert after a car crash on a deserted road, and no one knows to come and look for you. After a day waiting and hoping someone would come, you and your companion decide to start walking with your last two canteens of water. Your companion drinks all of his water right away, you use your sparingly. Late in the day, he falls and breaks his leg. He is delirious from the trauma, cannot travel any more, and cannot even stand for you to carry him because of the…

I recently ran across this historical reminder from theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s classic The Crucified God, and it struck a chord in light of current events:

The early Christians had constantly to defend themselves against the charge of irreligiositas and sacrilegium. In so far as they refused to make the obligatory sacrifices to the gods of the Roman state they drew on themselves the charge of ‘atheism’. This was not meant merely as an abusive description of Christians, but was a formal accusation which resulted in exclusion from society as ‘enemies of the human race’. Justin readily admitted his Christian atheism, which consisted of a denial of the gods of the state, and with regard to these ’so-called gods’ confessed himself to be an ‘atheist.’

The pseudo-criminal charge of atheism was part and parcel of the sporadic persecution of the early church in Roman society, resulting in martyrdom for even the “atheist” Justin Martyr.…

A couple of months ago I received a call from Tim Townsend asking if I would be interested in taking part in the Post Dispatch ‘blog about religion’. I did not take me long to call him back and accept the invitation. I was not naive about the task at hand. In 2 short months before that, my personal blogging experience gave me a taste of what it means to share my thoughts with the public. I have already experienced some harassment and insults by some readers, but it was, and still is, a worthwhile experience.

With the Post Dispatch Civil Religion blog, the challenge for me was a bit different. Now I have many distinguished co-bloggers who have a lot more expertise in writing and most have formal religious training. But more importantly, I am the only Muslim in the group. I may even be the only Muslim voice many…

“The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple and exactly worded, without explanation or commentary,” wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. “The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent Deity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws: these are its positive dogmas. It’s negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which is part of the cults we have rejected.”

Those tenets of the civil religion that Rousseau laid out nearly 250 years ago seem appropriate guidelines for the Post-Dispatch’s new religion blog.

Rousseau coined the term civil religion to describe the necessary basics of belief that keep a civilization together in accord with a social contract the civilization lives by. And while we certainly intend to discuss such beliefs on this blog, we also liked the name Civil Religion…