Religion Dispatches
…ffort to get a big chunk of the San Gabriel Mountains protected under Park Service rather than Forest Service jurisdiction. A mix of fairly traditional Christians and a somewhat larger number of nature people (let’s just call them “pagans”—a perfectly good word) gathered high up in a canyon grove next to a roaring wild river, whereupon I shouted out a short sermon about how Christians really need to relax about contaminating the Easter rite with n…
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…s. Cardinal Dolan is scheduled to preside at Saint Patrick’s Holy Thursday service this week. The feet of undocumented immigrants are battered by their flights from violence, poverty, and war. Right now, they are also ready to run from the possibility of deportation and the possibility of yet another separation from their families. Whose feet will Cardinal Dolan, so willing to pray over President Trump, choose to wash? When Jesus washed the feet o…
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…ople to conceive of meaningful lives in God-free ways — as painters in the service of art, as scientists in the service of knowledge. For David Brooks, in other words, it feels amazingly great to live amidst the spoils of our secular age! But really, how does it feel to live in an age like ours, having moved from “the all encompassing sacred cosmos, to our current world in which faith is a choice, in which some people believe, others don’t and a l…
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…s’ collapse, I called for the great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” to open the service. Much consternation and rebuke from some congregational insiders following the service: Did I not know that Martin Luther, author of “Ein Feste Burg,” was an anti-Semite? Another instance. When I came to California and to my current position, I was asked immediately by the ACLU to join in an effort to have a tiny, almost invisible, cross expunged from the seal of th…
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…th the right hand over the heart. After an item has been blessed in divine service – palm leaves, linens used to dress or to wipe up at the altar, a metal chalice – and has reached the end of its useful service, the preferred method of its disposal is consumption by fire. Palm leaves are often turned to ashes for use the following year on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian holy season of Lent. Chalices may be melted down and recast. We…
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…a variety of innovative approaches to collaboration between mental health service providers and faith-based organizations from around the state; demonstrating how spirituality can be incorporated into mental health services in a way that is client-driven and respects the separation of church and state; and sharing information from research findings on the role of spirituality in trauma recovery and mental health. We’ve worked hard to make the con…
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…helping out at that church. It was an attempt to discern how I might be of service and whether or not marrying my experiences and talents as a musician with my life of faith was something that was connected to that calling. I feel like I was called to a deeper awareness of God and that calling also was directly connected to an experience of service to an immediate moment of reaching out in kindness and compassion to someone and then a deeper aware…
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…vice. The rest of the UU protestors began the day at the 6 a.m. interfaith service, in which Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray of the UU Congregation of Phoenix, played a central role and UU singers participated in the joint choir. The more than 200 UUs, some in clergy garb but most in their bright yellow shirts emblazoned with the Standing on the Side of Love logo, were visible in the service and then in the march down the street. Once groups convened do…
Read More…rom Northern Ireland, from co-opting and misconstruing Francis’ remarks in service to Colhoun’s own yogaphobic agenda. And Colhoun’s yogaphobia is a part of a much larger conservative movement. There have been many high-profile examples of evangelical yogaphobia (I have written about some of them here and here), but evangelicals are not the only players in the yogaphobic movement. Fr. Colhoun’s comments concerning yoga were not dissimilar from oth…
Read More…ers in practice never are.” Seidel cited a 2010 study finding a quarter of service members are nonreligious. “So, you’re talking about an audience full of nonreligious service members whose commanding officer is imposing religion on them in a way they can’t escape. That’s coercion,” he said. “It shouldn’t be happening.” MRFF plans a formal appeal “to the highest levels of the Department of Defense,” Weinstein said. “If we fail to receive timely an…
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