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In Massachusetts, atheists lose ‘under God’ fight
The highest court in Massachusetts upheld the legality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance on May 9, dealing a blow to atheist groups who challenged the pledge on antidiscriminati...
Notre Dame signals it is open to gay athletes
The Catholic Church in the United States has taken a lot of heat over its stance against gay rights and for policies that often bar openly gay people from participating in church life....
Vincent Harding, historian and colleague of King
Vincent Harding, 82, a scholar, civil rights activist, and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr., died of an aneurysm in a Philadelphia hospital on May 19 following surgery the week before....
Painting Pentecost
Painter Sawai Chinnawong saturates the outpouring of the Spirit with the colors Thai art traditionally associates with the holy.
Beware of the book buzz
The book publishing world depends on buzz. The best kind of book buzz is created by readers who tell their friends about the books they love. Anyone who is part of a circle of reading friends knows that, despite dire predictions about the demise of book publishing, the appetite for reading books is alive and well. But readers have to find out about a book somehow, and that is where promotion comes in—either by publishers or by the authors themselves.
I understand the growing need for writers to promote their own work.
What are creative ministers thinking about these days?
I returned from UNCO (short for Unconference), an open-space incubator for churches....
Site of Jesus’ Last Supper a point of contention for some Israeli Jews
c. 2014 Religion News Service...
In publishing, all dogs go to heaven, but what about cats, horses and birds?
c. 2014 Religion News Service...
'Spiritual touch' therapy adopted by hospitals
Sandra Delgado wasn’t held much as a child growing up in a stern, Catholic, Mexican immigrant home in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley....
Right-sized stories
Poems, novels, and short stories have all influenced Christian ways of telling our sacred stories. What about a miniseries?
Harlem's experiment in interracial, pacifist community
The Harlem Ashram (1940-1948) was a grand experiment that didn't go very far. The interracial Christian commune at Fifth Avenue and 125th Street was modeled after ashrams, or Hindu religious centers, that Gandhi had established in India. Its founders were two white men, Ralph Templin and Jay Holmes Smith, who had been Methodist missionaries in India in the 1930s. There they became interested in Gandhi's synthesis of religion, politics, and nonviolent protest.
Templin and Smith were part of a cohort of American pacifists who saw Gandhi’s work as a potential model for political and religious activism in the United States.
Is this church attendance study all bad news?
I know a guy, a committed church member, who missed his own grandchild's baptism. It was far away, on a Sunday that was a busy one for his own church. So he felt compelled to skip the trip and go to church.
This impressed me. It's hard to imagine such a thing at the church where I work.
The story
There's wisdom in putting biblical storytelling at the heart of worship. We are formed by stories. I'm fond of the line by the poet Muriel Rukeyser embedded in the street outside the New York Public Library, "The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
When you think about what makes up you, it's not the cells of your body, it's more likely a story of some kind.
The Age of Evangelicalism, by Steven P. Miller
Steven Miller positions evangelicalism as the foil for other thinkers, movers, and shakers: it seemed so powerful and ubiquitous that those outside of the tent felt compelled to address it.
Sunday, June 1, 2014 (Ascension): Acts 1:1-11
In many ways, the Ascension story is too literal for our postmodern sensibilities. We know that the space station is circling the globe just above the clouds.
Christians condemn death penalty for Sudanese doctor accused of apostasy
c. 2014 Religion News Service
(RNS) Sudanese Christians have condemned the sentencing of a Christian woman to death by hanging after she married a Christian man....
Listening well: A chaplains vocation
Listening itself has a sacramental dimension. When a family gathers around a hospital bed, it becomes a sort of communion table.
Rest in peace, Vincent Harding
Vincent Harding died yesterday. If all the civil rights leader had done was draft King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech, that would have been quite a contribution. ("I watched this [antipoverty] program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war.") But in the 60s Harding founded Atlanta's Mennonite House (with his wife Rosemarie Freeney Harding), traveled around the South with the movement, and got his doctorate in history (here in Chicago, with Century contributing editor Martin Marty). Since then he led a career of teaching (mostly at Iliff), writing, and activism.
Look up. But still use your phone.
Much has been said about perils of social media and the excessive use of smart phones. I've chimed in once or twice in the past. The latest rant has come via the clip "Look Up." I agree with much in the assessment of our obsessive phone culture and admit my own tendency to focus more on my phone than my surroundings from time to time. Smart phones and social media feed a lack of attentiveness in relationships and a general distraction in everyday life we’d all do well to avoid.
But I'm also uneasy with these repeated guilt-inducing tirades against the current state of society's use of technology.