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Healing hands
Sick people long to be touched—the very thing loved ones tend to avoid. In today's mechanized medicine, doctors keep their distance as well.
Live-blogging the debate, sort of
I didn't post anything during the presidential debate last night, because I watched it without the benefit of an internet connection. Also because bona fide live-blogging can be seriously annoying to read. But if you want it in digest form, here's how I reacted in front of the TV.
Battle of the Sundays: Pulpit Freedom vs. World Communion
A curious thing is happening this Sunday in churches across America.
For some, this curious thing is Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The day, promoted by the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom for the fourth year, urges pastors to speak out in favor of candidates they support, defying IRS restrictions that forbid such political speech in religious nonprofits.
It’s generally a bad idea, and even most conservatives Christian pastors disagree with the ADF on this one. Yet there are still about 1,000 pastors who signed up for the ADF’s intiative, and, of course, Fox News personality Mike Huckabee has pledged his own support.
Meanwhile, in many mainline churches, the curious thing this Oct. 7 will not be Pulpit Freedom Sunday, but World Communion Sunday.
Thursday digest
New today from the Century: Tom Long on healing touch, Will Willimon reviews Lamin Sanneh, more.
World Christianity & American religion
Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America, by Robert Brenneman....
Summoned From the Margin, by Lamin Sanneh
For the last three decades, Lamin Sanneh has been a reliable and perceptive guide for those of us trying to think through interfaith issues, rethink missions and understand Christianity in its global reach. When I discovered Sanneh, I found his angle on Islamic/Christian conversation to be a provocative and refreshing relief from some of the fluff we were getting on that topic. Sanneh’s was also the first voice I heard to renovate the commonly accepted negative view of Christian missions.
Saved by fiction: Reading as a Christian practice
Reading fiction has done more to baptize my imagination, inform my faith and strengthen my courage than any prayer technique has.
Reading to write: Fall books: Reading habits
My writing life has become increasingly dependent upon my reading life, so much so that I generally begin my writing day by reading a new or newish volume of poetry (or the occasional richly textured work of fiction).
Romney gets specific on tax deductions
Kudos to Mitt Romney for suggesting a concrete and sensible income-tax reform: capping deductions at $17,000.
Now, it's not clear whether he means tax liability or taxable income. As Dylan Matthews explains, that's the difference between a highly progressive (in the technical sense, not the euphemism-for-liberal sense) proposal and one that would affect a lot of middle-class households.
Focus on the Family's false prophets
Libby Anne and Fred Clark have kindly pointed out that we have just entered the month, October 2012, about which writers from Focus on the Family penned a “letter from the future” almost 4 years ago, detailing the changes that would allegedly result if Barack Obama were to become president.
Wednesday digest
New today from the Century: Fiction and salvation, Shirley Showalter reviews Rhoda Janzen, more.
Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? by Rhoda Janzen
"Isn’t that an off-brand religion?” One of my son’s soon-to-be-relatives asked this question when he was introduced as having grown up in a Mennonite family.
If Mennonites are off-brand to many Americans, then Pentecostals might be known as firebrands. The average person knows very little about either faith. Rhoda Janzen, who has moved from the former to the latter, brings awareness to both.
Poll: Most Americans don't think Scientology is a religion
c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans do not believe Scientology is a real religion, according to a recent poll by 60 Minutes and Vanity Fair....
ENInews suspends service, seeks further funding
c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS/ENInews) Ecumenical News International announced Monday (Oct....
Descendants want justice for Connecticut witches
At age 82, Bernice Mable Graham Telian doubts she’ll live long enough to see the name of her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and ten others hanged in colonial Connecticut for ...
Sunday, October 14, 2012: Psalm 22:1-15
The psalmist knows loneliness. Even the most faithful believers have anguished over the fear that somehow God is not listening to their cries.
Buried by the government
A recent episode of PBS’s American Experience explored how the massive number of deaths in the Civil War sent the nation into shock. The catastrophe—750,000 dead—was equivalent to the U.S. suffering 7 million deaths today. Besides evoking this ghastly experience, Ric Burns’s film Death and the Civil War (reviewed here in the New York Times), which is based on Drew Gilpin’s book The Republic of Suffering, offers a fascinating perspective on current political debates over the size and scope of the federal government.
Tuesday digest
New today from the Century: The Civil War and the role of government, Pulpit Freedom Sunday, Rev., more.