Religion Dispatches
…if lost or stolen, but only if you first write down each and every serial number. Then you have to keep this information somewhere that’s not the same somewhere you keep the checks. But then they really do NOT spend just like cash—especially abroad where we meet and mix with people in their own places. Such places are not subject to our being guests there. So I do tend toward keeping travel cash in an odd place. (No, I’m not gonna share with you…
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…ncient principle that where God says before you were formed in the womb I knew you. … So for me, my faith informs my life. I try and spend a little time on my knees every day. But it all for me begins with cherishing the dignity, the worth, the value of every human life. After attacking Kaine for being on a ticket that supports “partial-birth” and publicly funded abortions—and slyly suggesting that he compromised his faith principles to do so—Penc…
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…ith every outward step, as our universe and our ignorance grows, so do the number of potential space alien hideouts. So does the belief that there must be someone out there. So every time I read about the discovery of a new Earth-like planet or read about NASA’s upcoming Kepler planet-finding mission or watch a movie like Contact, I grow excited over—and, like Brahe, even a little afraid of—the vast unknown. My mind boggles. What’s really out ther…
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…on. A small group of evangelical academics, including the noted scholar of new religions Gordon Melton, are calling for a more informed and sympathetic understanding of the broader Western esoteric tradition in the Sacred Tribes evangelical academic journal. Also, new books are being produced that draw upon scholarly historical and ethnographic approaches to the study of forms of paganism, and critique has been brought to popular evangelical books…
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…e of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. I cannot count the number of times I have heard well-meaning, good-hearted people respond to this appeal, saying, “Things are a lot better for gay people today than they were several years (or decades) ago. In time, our society (or churches) will come around on this issue.” To these friends and others, I must say, “It’s time.” For Lucas, Brown, Clementi, Walsh, and Chase the time is up. For t…
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…ver in Newsweek’s estimation.) The advent of the 1960s, and the magazine’s new status as subsidiary of the Post, led Newsweek to take a different approach. With the 1963 cover story “Catholicism in America” and 1967’s “How Do Catholics View Their Church?” it seemed coverage of the Church in national newsweeklies had moved away from the top-down approach. When Time began to tell similar stories of fracturing faiths and tested authority, it may have…
Read More…one to measure the pontiff’s influence” than, say, actual metrics like the number of people going to mass or returning to the church. According to Burke, you just have to “ask around” Boston to find folks who know someone who’s thinking about returning to the church or who feels less horrible about the church than in the darkest days of the U.S. clerical sex abuse scandal, which had Boston at its epicenter. That’s a pretty low bar, but of course n…
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