Search for "UPTO 70% OFF 1800-299-7264 What Are The Cheapest Day To Fly on Kenya Airways"

First Congregational UCC, Ripon Wisconsin

Cheese State Reality Check: On The Wisconsin Idea and the Social Gospel

By Daniel Schultz

…f a shared faith—almost certainly could not be reproduced today. Nor could the conditions responsible for creating the Wisconsin Idea. Looking at the history, that lesson seems obvious. What was radical yesterday isn’t often radical still today, and what’s radical today doesn’t very often stay that way for long. 1. This is contested, with other towns claiming to be the birthplace of the Republican party. Ripon has it documented. 2. The family simp…

Did Pope Francis Win, Lose or Draw at the Family Synod?

By Patricia Miller

…person of Jesus and in the community of the church. But at the end of the day, the decisions that the Vatican takes on these issues do have real-world implications that are inevitably “political,” as the church’s efforts to oppose same-sex marriage and contraceptive access have shown. And while the pope and the bishops debate how many divorced or gay Catholics can fit on the head of a pin, these temporal realities continued to evolve—with or with…

Government Prayer Isn’t Inclusive—Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise

By Andrew L. Seidel

…o reject Jesus be tortured: “God, I pray that you would convict us of that day where those who love you will be rewarded, and those who reject you will be sentenced.” He also asked for “forgiveness for the millions and millions of innocent lives that have been murdered for the sake of convenience.” Not so much building bridges as burning them. ALSO FROM THE AUTHOR Then, on Good Friday, the second-highest court in the land decided that the chaplain…

California Inmates Protest the Abuse of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

By Sarah Sentilles

…80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in US prisons on any given day—12,000 of them in California. California’s prisoners in solitary confinement spend 23 hours a day in Security Housing Units (SHUs)—small windowless concrete cells—with one hour in an exercise pen. Fluorescent lights in SHUs never shut off, reports Wired magazine, and video surveillance is constant. Some prisoners held in isolation are subjected to torture such as hog-ty…

The Pope’s Dubious Holocaust Remembrance

By Evan Derkacz

…wn signals the start of this year’s Yom HaShoah, or “Holocaust Remembrance Day,” marking the 68th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. First, in the name of optimism, let’s point out that it’s a good sign that we live in an age when the pope is expected to make a statement like the one B16 made today: The memory of this immense tragedy, which above all struck so harshly the Jewish people, must represent for everyone a constant warning so th…

A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

By Craig A. Ford Jr.

…exism in our formal doctrines and church practices. I therefore viewed the day after the scheduled black mass as a day of mourning—mourning that, instead of seeking out the Other, we acted on the bases of prejudices and fears; mourning that, instead of looking for points of dialogue, we performed only denunciations; and mourning that my religious community participated in a pattern of exclusion and ostracization for which we, in many real ways, ar…

Kendrick Lamar’s Hip-Hop Jeremiad

By Josiah Daniels

…dness not only with their own inner life but with the realpolitik of their day. With apocalyptic lyrics and a tone that can only be described as a funky-dirge, Kendrick sets the mood, No birds chirping or flying, no dogs barking We all nervous and crying, moving in caution In disbeliefs our beliefs the reason for all this The tallest building plummet, cracking and crumbling The ground is shaking, swallowing young woman With a baby, daisies, and ot…

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

By Sarah M. Pike

…festivals: New Age lifestyle tools and goddess worship; music of all kinds day and night; community kitchens and mind-enhancing drugs; a game of golf, a roller rink and other games and sports; and religious pilgrimage. Time and space are said to be different in Black Rock City. No one was talking on cell phones, clocks were largely invisible, and the city’s layout reoriented participants with its semi-circular streets running from A to L. This yea…

Hajj Journal: Door Number 89: The Door with No Name

By Amina Wadud

…two rakaat at the maqam Ibrahim. As I circled around inside the mosque one day, I came across Bab raqm tis’wa thamanin, “door number 89,” literally. The door with no name. Facing the mosque at door number one, bab maalik ’abd-al-’Aziz, this door is off to the left. Looking at the mosque floor plan, this is where the building structure of the mosque is deepest. This is “the women’s section.” I noticed as I was walking through the first floor toward…

A Church Group, a Lawsuit, and a Culture of Abuse

By T.F. Charlton

…’s teachings on corporal punishment are virtually unchanged since Tomczak’ days as pastor. They continue to promote evangelical parenting manuals like Ted Tripp’s controversial⁠ Shepherding a Child’s Heart, which has sparked controversy over its endorsement of spankings for babies as young as eight months old. Application of this teaching can lead to kids being spanked multiple times a day (far more often than I was, as the daughter of very strict…