Steve Thorngate
How to talk about the rapture that didn't happen?
So, the rapture didn't happen over the weekend....
Dismembership plan
When House of Mercy began in 1996, most attendees weren’t interested in formal membership. In 2008, the church joined the ELCA—which requires congregations to keep a member roll.
Link digest
Subscribe to the Century editors' link blogging by feed.
Uganda shelves kill the gays bill--for now.
Awards and a nomination
We're very pleased that indie-press digest Utne Reader nominated the Century for a 2011 Utne Independent Press Award
in the "body/spirit" category.
About that MLK quote
A friend posted this to Facebook the other day: "'Burial at sea is a weird choice, and only invites suspicion, but I really don't want to have to see the photographs, either.'" - Martin Luther King, Jr."
The rest of the Ryan budget
A series this week by Jonathan Cohn takes this point as its premise:
...A tax receipt at last?
It looks like the U.S. government may be well on its way toward
...
"We have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his Batteries"
Today is the 150th anniversary
of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, which began the U.S. Civil War. In a
...
Link digest
Subscribe to the Century editors' link blogging by feed.
Solidarity in honor of Dr. King.
How, and how not, to stimulate the economy.
Bob Herbert's vision
I'm late to this, but I can't let it pass by: I'm really going to miss Bob Herbert's op-eds in the New York Times. I think E.J....
Profile in "courage"
Pundits have been praising Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin
Republican who chairs the House budget committee, for the courage displayed in
his 2012 budget proposal. But their definition of "courage"
must be different from mine.
When despair is funny
Much of the most delightfully silly online humor follows a particular formula: a single good idea that alters or plays on a pop-cultural artifact; execution that relies on computer technology, but not too much (some simple Photoshop work, a couple lines of code); loads of nostalgia.
The budget battle's narrow terms
It's great to see David Beckmann convince Mark Bittman to join the fast against attempts to cut federal programs
that help the poor and the hungry. Bittman's dismissal of the religious element
of the effort by Bread for the World and others--"I doubt God will intervene
here"--betrays his unfamiliarity with Christian thought. (I'm tempted to send him
one of my ELCA "God's work, our hands" fridge magnets.) But thanks to Bittman's
involvement, now even the Nation is
giving the progressive evangelical effort positive coverage.
I wonder if Ed Begley knows the price of organic milk?
Tuesday on the CBC interview show Q, Jian
Ghomeshi talked to actor Ed Begley Jr., Hollywood's leading environmental
activist and green-lifestyle enthusiast. Discussing Living With Ed, the reality TV show in which Begley
and wife Rachelle Carson clash over his carbon-footprint obsession, Begley
observed that Carson is the sort of person who cares about the earth but
doesn't go to extremes.
"The good old hymns" defined
As a church musician, I've been known to program what I thought were familiar Charles Wesley hymns, only to find my non-Methodist song leaders tongue-tied by the ambitious melodies and all-doctrine...
Is Lent about self-denial?
I grew up around evangelical church leaders who were hardcore
about spiritual fasting, sometimes going a week on just water or 40 days on
...