“I like to think I’m a grassroots organizer," says Isaac S. Villegas of Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship. "I rearrange pews; I find people to make sloppy joes for hungry people.”
Is exaggerated violence in Passion plays merely a product of our baser
natures? Or does the savagery actually have a proper place in the
crucifixion's meaning?
I worry about avian flu. I worry that my identity is being stolen right this second. I check four times to make sure I turned the stove off. It's breathless, compulsive behavior.
"Religious commitments are no longer taken for granted as part of North American people's lives," says Scott Kershner of Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center in Washington State. "So space opens up to ask very basic and interesting questions."
Vanderbilt was not the first school to offer theological education in a prison. But it did pioneer the approach of having seminarians learn in company with prisoners.
The children from our church walked into the synagogue quietly. But
when the rabbi invited them to look at the ark containing the Torah scroll, they lost all reserve.