Rev. Danny Fisher

Over at Religion Dispatches, sociologist Wendy Cadge, who currently teaches at Brandeis University, asks, “Can the efficacy of prayer be determined through a double-blind clinical trial? Do studies measure prayer in ways that even make sense?” She herself suspects that we might be “learning more about medical science than about the healing power of prayer” through these studies. This is a good piece for chaplains to take note of.

Earlier this year, I previously blogged about another essential piece at Religion Dispatches by Cadge entitled “Bearing Witness: The Work of Hospital Chaplains”. She is currently at work on a book called Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine, which “examines the historical and current institutional presence of religion and spirituality in hospitals.” As part of her research, she’s apparently spoken to quite a lot of chaplains.

As I said when I posted about “Bearing Witness,” Cadge has also contributed significantly to the ever-growing canon of literature about Buddhism in America. She’s the author of a tremendously important book that I’d recommend if you haven’t read it already: Heartwood: The First Generation of Theravāda Buddhism in America. It’s an ethnographic study of both immigrant and convert communities in the United States, and offers insights that wil be valuable to American readers regardless of what Buddhist tradition they study and/or practice.

This from Avaaz.org:

There are only months left to build a strong global climate treaty — but some G8 countries are putting its future in doubt.

The G8, meeting in Rome this week, is weighing a pledge to limit global warming below 2 degrees centigrade, the level at which scientists say a deadly climate chain reaction becomes dangerously likely. Canada, Japan, and Russia are trying to veto the 2-degree limit — and an immediate global outcry is needed to rescue it. Add your name to the petition, and Avaaz will deliver it with stunts and meetings in Rome this Wednesday and Thursday!

Petition to G8 and world leaders:

We call on our leaders to go to Copenhagen and sign a global climate treaty that is:

AMBITIOUS: enough to leave a planet safe for us all.

FAIR: for the poorest countries that did not cause climate change but are suffering most from it.

BINDING: with real targets that can be legally monitored and enforced.

Start now. Harper, Medvedev, Aso, and other leaders gathered in Italy–agree a 2-degree target!

Sign the petition here.

The Associated Press is reporting that over 150 have been killed in riots and demonstrations by Uighurs that have broken out in Xinjiang, China. They write:

The bloody riots in China’s Muslim far west are a disturbing reminder of anti-Chinese violence in another troubled region — Tibet — and show how heavy-handed rule and radical resistance are pushing unrest to new heights.

The clashes between ethnic Muslim Uighurs and China’s Han majority in Xinjiang that left more than 150 dead signaled a new phase in a region used to seeing bombings and assassinations by militant separatists but few mass protests.

“We haven’t had anything like this, really, ever,” said Dru Gladney, a Uighur expert at the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California. “It really gives strong evidence of widespread unrest and discontentment.”

Xinjiang’s problems are strikingly similar to those that set Tibet boiling last year: decades of Chinese rule, from radical communism to free-market reforms, that have failed to win over ethnic minorities living on China’s vast western fringe.

Activists, exiles and ordinary people from Tibet and Xinjiang — a third of China’s territory — have for years complained of unfair treatment. Growing migration by Han Chinese and controls on religious practices — Islam for Xinjiang’s Uighurs, Buddhism for Tibetans — have struck at the core of their identities and made them feel besieged in their homelands.

Discontent has sputtered for decades, carried on by a militant Uighur underground and Tibetan monks and nuns. But most protests have been quickly quashed by authorities.

In the past year, however, incidents have escalated and become bolder, in part because radical groups, once on the fringe, appear to be growing in influence and voice. Among them are the Tibetan Youth Congress, which advocates full independence for the Himalayan region, and the militant East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which China has accused of leading a violent separatist movement in Xinjiang.

Read the full story here.