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Can a Church Split Truly Be Gracious?

By Adam J. Copeland

…erians, calling itself a new Reformed body. Their website reports they now number 127 congregations and 213 pastors. Most of these come from the PCUSA. Beyond my denomination, there is a growing rift and talk of a possible schism in the United Methodist Church. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has lost approximately 600 congregations in the past few years. The Anglican Communion views the Episcopal Church of the United States with increa…

The Christian Roots of the New Age: The Aquarian Gospel

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…f God in man; and these, your sons, will be the first to tell the news” (7: 12-14). In short, there was already a spiritual underground in Roman Palestine, and both Jesus and John received their first spiritual instruction from their mothers, who had received it in turn from Elihu and Salome. Elihu honored all the gods and received wisdom from every spiritual source: from Brahmanism, from Judaism, from Zarathustra, from ancient Egypt. (If this see…

‘Always Pray to the Father’: Mormon Leader Calls Desire for Knowledge of Heavenly Mother ‘Arrogant and Unproductive’

By Holly Welker

…us Christ of Latter-day Saints. Confused about which church he should join, 14-year-old Joseph Smith read James 1:5: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Joseph therefore decided to ask God for wisdom. In response, God and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph and told him to join no church, for they were all false. Instead, Joseph would be guided to restore God…

Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

By Ed Simon

…hat coincidentally matches Paul, Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (also published in 1905) describes how for “Those people in possession of spontaneous, fun-living dispositions” the creed of endless material accumulation coupled with a disdain of pleasure was “absolutely meaningless.” Pittsburgh’s central creed was exactly as Weber described it, a cold city governed by a tough gospel, and so Paul absconds with his fat…

Walk the Walk: Honoring Common Ground on Abortion

By Frances Kissling

…is we, after all, who extended promises of trust-building guidelines and a spirit of inclusion to cautious voices on all sides, asking them to take the risks necessary to talk and to listen. When we don’t live up to that same spirit, all we manage to do is affirm every cynical instinct, every pessimistic expectation that is so pervasive in the politics of abortion and that keeps us from achieving anything together. And our responsibility to uphold…

The British (Bible) Invasion: KJV 400-Year Anniversary Rolls On

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…tant Reformation and its vernacular translation of the scriptures is a new spirit unleashed by both. The spirit of these two movements—Reformation and translation—was radically egalitarian and individualistic. The contention was that all people were capable of close reading, and the commitment was to individual Christians’ rights to make up their own minds about what the scripture said. These political commitments hinged in turn, on the recognitio…

God Wants You to Work Harder, and to Stop Complaining

By James Dennis LoRusso

…uture where businesses benevolently guide us toward peace, prosperity, and spiritual vitality; managers become therapeutic purveyors of spiritual wisdom and for-profit firms act as the ultimate arbiters of the social order. Still, when the former COO of Wal-Mart, Don Soderquist, states in his keynote address at the Conference, “Wal-Mart believes that it has a responsibility to God to take care of the planet,” behind this view lies a commitment to…

How Contemporary Spirituality Makes Us Stupid, Selfish, and Unhappy

By David Webster

…s” is, at the very least, problematic. As I suggest in the book, mind-body-spirit spirituality is in danger of making us stupid, selfish, and unhappy. Stupid—because its open-ended, inclusive and non-judgemental attitude to truth-claims actually becomes an obstacle to the combative, argumentative process whereby we discern sense from nonsense. To treat all claims as equivalent, as valid perspectives on an unsayable ultimate reality, is not to real…

Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

By Andrea R. Jain

…angels” by distorting the words of Francis: Pope Francis said ‘do not seek spiritual answers in yoga classes’. Yoga is certainly a risk. There’s the spiritual health risk. When you take up those practices from other cultures, which are outside our Christian domain, you don’t know what you are opening yourself up to. The bad spirit can be communicated in a variety of ways. I’m not saying everyone gets it, or that it happens every time, and people m…

Rick Warren, Is That All the Courage You Can Muster?

By Ross Murray

…tter to Timothy, he reminded his young disciple that God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power and love and self-discipline. The spirit of power means speaking out, even when it slightly shifts your public persona, threatens book sales, or makes your followers a little uncomfortable. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has learned all of this, and I pray that the same spirit of power will encourage Rick Warren and all of our religious le…