Religion Dispatches
…pe. I wanted to stay in and help. So you prepared for a lifetime of Church service, starting as most young men do with two years of missionary service. You had a plan to work and pay for your mission. You started your paperwork. You met with your bishop. And when you did, you brought up gay marriage. Why? I brought it up because I was afraid of being sent out on a mission and the issue of gay marriage coming up and not being able to preach that it…
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…
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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…
Read More…nded “the release of a secret legal agreement between the Internal Revenue Service and a radical atheist organization that portends increased scrutiny and harassment of churches and Christians, potentially infringing upon their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association.” Upon closer examination—surprise!—that turns out not to be the case. Patrick Elliott, a staff attorney at FFRF, told me “there has been a lot of misinformation p…
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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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…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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…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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…involved in discussion about whether a local church could be used for the service and whether local clergy ought to participate. There are differing perceptions about whether she instructed local pastors not to allow the ordination service to be held in local churches. It is hard to know all that went on behind the scenes. In any case, she encouraged her colleagues to “be extravagant in hospitality” to those who would be involved even if the deno…
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…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…
Read More…s a beacon of insight, not only in service to our vast congregation but in service to an entire befuddled and dispirited nation that seems to have lost its way. We are proud that your new book deals explicitly with religious themes. You have been leaning in this direction for a long time, and we are glad to see you make your conviction that good religion is essential to good living ever more explicit. Your own intense and transformative religious…
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