David Hahn, the head of school at Long Island Lutheran, said the decision to enroll is generally based on his school's commitment to a faith-based education and academic excellence.
Practical commitment to a faith-proposition therefore could be a venture: there is no misguided 'doxastic voluntarism' in allowing this possibility.
And there is the rub, the necessity of a personal commitment to a particular faith, with its own specific language, rituals and traditions.
Mind you, religious beliefs were once "useful" -- giving courage and comfort and the source of the creative arts -- but now "they are stultifying and divisive... they encourage ignorance, distract people from recognizing problems in the real world... Commitment to a particular faith is by definition religious bigotry".
The measure of a person's commitment to a life of faith is to be found in how the vulnerable, the victimized and the marginalized are treated.
Our results indicate that rejection of evolution is likely to occur due to a commitment to a variety of faith-based and religious views of the origin of human beings.
"I came to realize," he wrote in his second book, "The Audacity of Hope," that "without an unequivocal commitment to a particular community of faith, I would be consigned at some level to always remain apart, free in the way that my mother was free, but also alone in the same ways that she was ultimately alone".
"Without a vessel for my beliefs, without a commitment to a particular community of faith, at some level I would always remain apart, and alone," he said in 2006.
The tithe is an important part of life at the Universal Church, which was founded in 1977 by Bishop Macedo and says it follows the "prosperity theology" by which faith and commitment to a church are rewarded with material prosperity.
There is a sense in which this renders any commitment to a value system an expression of faith, rather than a result of rational reflection.
In other words, the internet augments people's commitment to an offline practice of faith, rather than being itself a place to "do God".
