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Gun madness
The Peaceable Kingdom pricks my conscience every time I see it because of the enormous gap between its vision and the world's reality.
Leading with bold imagination
Most people who serve as church leaders realize what an important time it is in our religious landscape. Because of demographic, generational, technological and economic shifts, we realize that many churches are coming to the end of their seasons. In this important moment, we will need leaders who can experiment, create, test and plant.
Being healed
A few years ago I lost a friend to cancer, barely 12 months after the diagnosis. During her final months she wrapped up business at her job and then went about saying goodbye to those people closest to her. She planned "final" experiences with friends and family—including a magnificent, all-expenses paid vacation with a few closest friends— and prepared herself spiritually by seeking out the rites and rituals of the church that would prepare her to finish her earthly life: renewal of baptism, Holy Communion, anointing.
Monday digest
New today from the Century: The peaceable kingdom vs. our violent world, imaginative leadership, more.
Take This Waltz
This low-key, intimate Canadian film is in danger of passing by unnoticed. An anatomy of two relationships—a marriage and a courtship that overlap—the film is excitingly fresh and unconventional, and one of the few bright spots in a dim summer movie season.
Rabbis aim to inject more morality into business
c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Banks make loans they know homebuyers can't pay back. Conglomerates market unhealthy food to children. Wall Street tycoons bet against their own shareholders....
Missouri to vote on prayer amendment as critics warn of legal nightmares
c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) Missourians will vote on Tuesday (Aug....
Most Americans keep their faith private while online
Meet the social media “nones.” A new survey finds that though most Americans are religious, they generally do not use social media to supplement worship and mostly keep their faith private online.<...
Poll shows Catholics side with bishops on religious liberty, but warm to Obama
c. 2012 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) A new poll shows that American Catholics tend to agree with their bishops' concerns that religious liberties are at risk in the U.S. ...
Why did Snoop Dogg change his name when he became a Rasta?
c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Snoop Dogg scored a huge hit with the hip-hop anthem "What's My Name?" back in 1993....
I love how history repeats itself
No, history does not repeat itself. Yes, history is a human construct....
Links? Links.
Here are some things I read recently but didn't get around to blogging about.
Friday digest
New today from the Century: History repeats itself, a sonnet by Anthony opal, more.
Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitism, by Eric W. Gritsch
Gritsch exegetes Luther’s appalling anti-Semitic pronouncements, placing them—never excusing them—in social and theological context and tracing their reception over the centuries....
What’s in a promise? Living by covenant, not contract
Monastic vows sound familiar to anyone who's been to a wedding. In both marriage and celibacy, we promise to be faithful.
Gun control as a religious issue
Of all the controversies that have followed in the bloody wake of the July 20 shooting rampage in Aurora, Colorado, few have provided such clarifying insight into the moral tensions and contradicti...
Orthodox Church in America ousts its leader
The Orthodox Church in America announced that it had forced its leader, Metropolitan Jonah, to resign earlier this summer, chiefly because he had failed to remove a priest accused of rape....