This is your place to publicly comment on the topics and issues addressed in Speaking of Faith programs. React in a personal way, and put into words what the programs mean to you.

What is your creed? How does it shape your practice or your experience of others?
Share Your Reflection

Wishing for Pelikan (July 29, 2004)
My reflection is simple and personal: I would love to be able to recite the Nicene Creed with all my heart and soul. I was raised a Catholic and have tried over my half-century of life to speak the Apostles' Creed with conviction and to hear my voice as one with my fellow parishioners. I can be moved by the simple beauty of the words and can be transformed as I repeat a faith distilled into words and repeated over time and space, as Dr. Pelikan said.

It is soothing, hypnotic, inspiring. But what does one do with the creed when the Immaculate Conception is not believable? Can you be 90% true to your faith and repeat the Creed with conviction, omitting the doubtful section? Can you say the Creed in its entirety, saying to yourself that the idea does not have to be taken truly literally. I think not. So I wish for a way, but I have not found it yet.

Mary Drain
Alpharetta, GA (WABE, 90.1 FM)

Captivated by Pelikan (July 26, 2004)
I heard your program for the first time yesterday driving from Michigan to Virginia, and think it was on WETA, but I heard it advertised somewhere in Ohio on the way and decided I wanted to listen if I could. I'd never heard of it before, and found Dr. Pelikan completely intriguing, and Ms. Tippett an excellent interviewer. Her low giggle let me know she was listening and as captivated by what he was saying as I was, but she had the good sense not to interrupt!

I think of myself as a religious person, although currently, living in Geneva, Switzerland, I'm not a member of a church there. I miss the intellectual challenge I got from sermons at my Episcopal church here in Arlington, though, and found your program to fill a void. I'll come back online from Switzerland once I'm home.

Thanks a lot for a great idea for a show, and for avoiding having it pretend to substitute for worship, to which I would not have listened for a nanosecond.

Paula Lynch
Geneva, Switzerland (Listens Online and WETA, 90.9 FM)

Creeds in Judaism (July 25, 2004)
As a Reconstructionist Jew, I share with my learned colleague of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion both a specific creed and the need to universalize religion. For this reason, in my recent translation of the Jewish prayer book, the Shema, often called Judaism's creed, is translated, "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord [by however many different names addressed] is One." The creed, then, is this statement of belief that those who worship God by other names, Allah, Guanyin, Durga, Great Spirit or whatever, are united.

Leslie Brisman
New Haven, CT (WPKT, 90.5 FM)

Creeds Revisited (July 26, 2004)
Thank you for a most thought-provoking interview with Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan. What a breath of fresh air to hear a brilliant historian scholar speak of the Christian creeds as nourishing and life-giving to many rather than something that is dead weight that needs to be quickly cast aside. I enjoy your program and wish you the very best.

Jem Sullivan
Washington, DC (WETA, 90.9 FM)

My Personal Creed (August 3, 2004)
My Creed
God provides all of my needs, thus I strive to fill each day with thankfulness. God has created all people, thus I strive to treat all people with respect. God has provided all with special gifts, thus I strive to recognize and nurture my special gifts and those of each person I encounter. God loves me unconditionally, thus I strive to feel loved at all times, and to extend unconditional love to others, including my enemies and those who hate me.

I also strive to be non-judgmental and forgiving of myself and in all interactions with others. God is my guiding light, thus I strive to be confident in everything that I do. God desires that I seek justice, thus I strive to seek justice for all within my sphere of influence and concern, truth over untruth. God's work is risky, thus I strive to endure all suffering that results from the striving for justice (truth).

The problem I have with most creeds is that they are statements of belief or faith only and do not state how that belief or faith affects personal behavior. Faith or belief should lead to action — should compel us to acton.

Gary Engstrom
Minneapolis, MN (KNOW, 91.1 FM)

Creeds and Authority (July 25, 2004)
Your guest, in soft-shoeing around the notion of creeds, failed to address the relationship between creeds and authority. For all his attempts to render creeds innocuous—by explaining that there is one way to say, "I love you," that creeds are liturgical tools, and that creeds may be helpful for teaching one's faith to one's children—your guest missed the most toxic component, i.e., that the modern apprehension to creeds is due to the authority that creeds give to church hierarchy. The authority that ordains the creeds is the same authority that pontificates on the geocentric universe, the single-sex clergy, restrictions on birth control, sexual morals, the stature of women in marriage and society, the death penalty, and other stances on divisive social issues. Since the Enlightenment, the modern mind has rejected ex cathedra decrees on truth. Isn't this at the heart of the problem with creeds?

Second, although you inquired, your guest didn't address the faiths that reject creeds. Not just Judaism, but the Baptist Church also purports to be non-creedal, and I'm sure there are others. Rabbi Emanuel Levison has contrasted Christianity's creedal tradition with the Talmudic tradition of Judaism. The Talmudic tradition, rather than establishing a creed, established a sacred dialogue for exploring doctrinal questions. Christianity lacks a similar tradition, in large part due to its impulse toward authoritarian.

As historic matter, it seems to me that Christianity's creedal tradition arises from the historic circumstance that Christianity's earliest adherents did not trust that other communities and religious leaders were acting in good faith, whether it be Peter's rejection of Paul (which the orthodox deny, but which has historic support) or Marcion's rejection of the Jewish God (which is indisputable). This complete lack of trust meant that the disagreements had to be resolved through authority rather than dialogue.

I would have been interested in hearing your guest, particular as a historian, discuss these aspects of creeds.

Brian Petruska
Hattiesburg, MS (WMAH, 90.3 FM)

Delaying My Departure (July 28, 2004)
What an amazing program! I'm the pastor of a United Methodist Church and am awakened every Sunday morning at 7:00 by Krista's voice. What follows is usually nothing short of amazing. This past week's interview with Jaroslav Pelikan was incredible! I often find myself delaying my departure to church so that I can listen to all of Krista's interview. I am terribly appreciative of this program and Krista's considerable gifts.

William Myers
Battle Creek, MI (WUOM, 91.7 FM)

Kudos (July 25, 2004)
Outstanding program!

James Hawthorne
Woodland Hills, CA (WBEZ, 91.5 FM)

Doing Without a Shared Creed (July 25, 2004)
As a Yale-educated listener, I know it's almost heretical to quarrel with Jaroslav Pelikan. But I was offended, intrigued and finally disappointed by his remarks on creeds. First I was bothered by his remark that, in trying to define the Trinity as one god, "the real Unitarians were the Trinitarians." I would argue that the real Unitarians were the martyrs that the Trinitarians killed, believers in a single god like Michael Servetus who paid the ultimate price for arguing that the Trinity was theologically unsupportable.

Then I was intrigued when Krista Tippett listened to Pelikan's analysis of the Nicene Creed and wondered why we say it at all. I was heartened when Pelikan remarked that Tippett was of a kind with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who argued that each person should be at work creating her or his own statement of beliefs. Yes, I thought! Then I was disappointed by Pelikan's casual dismissal of Emerson, as he said that once you create such a statement, you repeat it and repeat it, and then you teach it to your children, and before you know it, you have another creed.

These remarks make me think that Pelikan, who clearly prides himself on thorough scholarship, knows nothing of how Unitarian Universalist churches conduct themselves. (Nor may Tippett; a search of your site for the word "Unitarian" turns up only half a dozen citations, most of which are listener comments!)

Where Pelikan's dismissal of Emersonian thought runs aground is in his assumption that once you decide what you believe, you'll repeat it again and again to yourself and your children. But Unitarian churches believe that the nature of revelation is ongoing—your beliefs may well and often do change! Thus, Unitarians DON'T repeat the same creed to themselves week after week; they are at liberty to revise their beliefs as experience teaches them.

Moreover, children at Unitarian churches are not so simply taught their parents' beliefs, but rather educated in all the traditions of world faith and urged to make their own decisions. Each spring, in Coming of Age ceremonies, our youth stand up and say what they believe; it's not always what their parents believe, nor even what they may believe next week. But they have done as Emerson suggested, beginning a lifetime of intellectual engagement with questions of faith which is our best legacy.

Brian Nelson
Woodland Hills, CA (KPCC, 89.3 FM)