Religion Dispatches
…ross the top of church’s Easter-themed webpage: Christian Faith Center, in Seattle, used #RememberFriday and #CelebrateSunday, while Hillsong, the Australian-turned-global megachurch musical phenomenon, ran an entire branded campaign around #crossequalslove. Other churches used Easter as a verb (perhaps in reference to the final stanza of this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, or simply because our culture verbs almost everything online). “#EasterWithUs…
Read More…he National Catholic Reporter, “since the 2011 USCCB elections, a stunning number of very talented people have left the USCCB” and many of their replacements have little experience with social justice policy but “a string of associations with different conservative outfits”: Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but one wonders if Pope Francis could be hired to work at the USCCB today. He has no background in religious liberty litigation. He did…
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When I began attending Mars Hill Church in 2006, its main facility in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood was headquarters and clubhouse—a 20,000 square foot renovated hardware warehouse seating over a thousand where young guys loitered in the parking lot and rock music from worship band practices thundered outside after gospel class. On Sundays, the sight of security guards monitoring the entryway with the impassive self-importance of club bouncers w…
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…y spooky.” Even more recently Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, told a live audience that: “Yoga is demonic… It’s absolute paganism… Yoga and meditation and Easternism is [sic] all opening to demonism… if you just sign up for a little yoga class, you’re signing up for a little demon class. That’s what you’re doing. And Satan doesn’t care if you stretch as long as you go to hell.” Similar to Islamophobic attempts to…
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…riod of time from his pastoral role at Mars Hill Church, the megachurch in Seattle that he co-founded. Even from an outsider’s perspective, Driscoll’s gradual fall from grace has been painful to watch. Driscoll, of course, has always been controversial, which to his followers is part of his allure. But with the exception of his most stalwart defenders, recently his actions and overall persona have become almost impossible to defend. Here on RD Bec…
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…formed evangelical church planters that he co-founded, removed him and his Seattle based Mars Hill Church from the organization’s membership, and asked him to step down as a pastor. Following this news, Lifeway Christian Stores, the second largest distributor of Christian books, announced it will no longer carry his books, and Mars Hill cancelled their annual signature Resurgence Conference scheduled for October 2014. Driscoll continues to find hi…
Read More…and authoritarian rules. Mark Driscoll, the butch young fellow who built a Seattle-area megachurch, was celebrated for his strongman style, which included using juvenile language against people whose sexual orientations and gender expressions he didn’t approve of (up to and including depictions of Jesus as “a guy I could beat up”). When he was widely and credibly accused of being a domineering egomaniac, his church swiftly fell apart. These models…
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…School, Willie James Jennings at Yale Divinity School, and Brian Bantum at Seattle Pacific University have been rightly praised for their penetrating scholarship. They are interested in revisiting the fundamental ideas of Christianity in dialogue with Black literature and culture. While this is a welcome development, it remains to be seen how scholarship addressing deep and important questions of faith translates to a secular public, and particula…
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…odist minister, began prayer breakfasts for the rich and powerful in 1930s Seattle. After years of serving the poor, Vereide decided that social change would more likely come from influencing politicians and businessmen. Vereide was so successful that he moved to Washington DC to set up prayer breakfasts for congressmen and other local leaders. In 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower was elected president, Vereide, his protégé Senator Frank Carlson, and e…
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…al. So, in order to honor Hughes’ malapropism, RD consulted with a pair of Seattle bartenders to produce this original cocktail recipe (such a cocktail in fact already existed, but ours is designed especially with the Trump campaign in mind). You can make it for your election night viewing party, feature it at your next Jewish event, or sip it alone while contemplating the ambient anti-Semitism that has surrounded the Trump campaign. L’chaim! Maze…
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