One of the world’s largest and most controversial Pentecostal churches has been given permission to build a $200m (£130m) replica of Solomon’s Temple in Brazil’s economic capital, São Paulo. The 10,000 capacity “mega-church”, which is the brainchild of Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God , will also house a replica of the Ark of the Covenant and be built according to “biblical orientations”.
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Solomon’s Temple in Brazil would put Christ the Redeemer in the shade
Today’s New York Jewish Week reports that the American Jewish Congress , an advocacy group known for its expertise on church-state issues, has suspended operations due to financial problems. AJCongress lost $21 million of its $24 million endowment in the 2008 Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. (See prior posting .) The AJCongress demise is also blamed on changes made in the 1990′s by Jack Rosen, a successful businessman who served as president of the group.
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AJCongress, Leading Church-State Advocate, Suspends Operations After Financial Losses
Worship has sometimes been stripped of ritual rules and devices like incense, vestments and the liturgical calendar in order to focus on instruction for practicing faith in the workaday world. Of these two tendencies, many churches nowadays seek a balance within to their traditions and today’s needs.
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All religions have in common the value of worship
A Utah judge has set a date for an extradition hearing for imprisoned polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs , who is facing multiple felony charges in Texas. The cult leader refused to sign extradition papers delivered to him last month at the Utah State Prison by Texas authorities.
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Extradition hearing set for polygamist sect leader
A councillor is facing a disciplinary hearing after calling the Church of Scientology “stupid” in a post on the Twitter website. Wales’ public standards watchdog said John Dixon is likely to have breached the code of conduct for local authority members with his short message last year. Religion News Blog, whose publishers consider Scientology to be a destructive cult, often files news about the organization under the header ‘hate group’ — in light of the cult’s lengthy history of hate- and harassment activities.
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Councillor faces inquiry over ‘stupid’ Scientologists tweet
A RLUIPA lawsuit was filed last week against the Borough of Pemberton, New Jersey by the Apostolic Church of Deliverance that applied for a zoning variance over six months ago. According to a press release yesterday from Mauck & Baker, the law firm which filed the suit, Borough officials have clearly indicated that they will deny the application from the largely African-American church.
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RLUIPA Lawsuit Challenges Delay In Formal Zoning Variance Denial
I’m cleaning out the great mass of books on my shelves in the vain hope of getting some order in my life. Of course I got stuck early on by re-reading well treasured books that have been gathering too much dust on the shelves.
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Samuel Wilberforce and the first General Convention on the Episcopal Church beginnings.
Editor’s Note: A previous reference and post on the Pilgrims provoked a flurry of emails from scholars and others quite passionate on the subject.
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Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners
List of 14 updates to canon law of the Roman Catholic Church labels pedophilia, ordaining women as “grave delicts.”
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Revised Vatican law labels sex abuse, female priests as crimes
OK, so this comes from the Rev. Dusty Ray, pastor of Heartland Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where he is one of the leaders of a movement opposing the construction of a new 52,000-square-foot, “megachurch”-style Islamic center, including a mosque. (Who knew Murfreesboro, Tenn., had such a thriving Muslim community?)
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Unintended Ironic Quote of the Year
Last Sunday I was preaching in a church and had to ask if the message would be going online. Every now and then you have to be aware of such things. But unless you’re sharing information that is sensitive, does it really matter? I suppose the myth of online exposure is alluring for all egos.
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Does It Matter If It’s Going Online?
VATICAN CITY — The Roman Catholic Church has brokered a historic deal to release 52 political prisoners in Cuba, following three-way talks between Cuban President Raul Castro, Spanish Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos and Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
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Catholic Church helps free 52 Cuban dissidents
Editor’s note from Paul: After reading this, also check out the companion piece reflecting further on this post, over at Tenured Radical . Janine Giordano Drake It all started this past May with an email composed by an undergraduate student in “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought,” a course offered in the Religious Studies department at the University of Illinois. The student forwarded to the department chair an email about utilitarianism and Natural Law that his instructor, Catholic theologian Kenneth Howell, sent to the class during the term
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Teaching Sexuality and Religion
I recently enjoyed reading The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. In the book they suggest that the role of the pastor has shifted from religious service provider to CEO in many churches. But they also suggest there needs to be a further shift, to trainer (i.e.
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Job Description?
We welcome the following guest post from Samira Mehta, a graduate student in American Religious Cultures at Emory University who is writing a dissertation on Christian/Jewish interfaith families in the U.S.
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Nikki Haley and the Construction of South Asian Identity
Today’s guest post comes to us from our Senior Norwegian correspondent Hilde Løvdal, who posted here last year on ” The Adventures of a Norwegian in Colorado Springs .” Today she sends her exploration of the influence of contemporary Christian music in her homeland. People often ask me why I am so fascinated by American evangelicalism
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The Oslo Soul Children and the Cowboy Twins
Last night I read the homily given by Archbishop Oscar Romero during a Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday in 1977, which spoke about the way in which the day’s celebration reminds us of the great works of the Holy Spirit. One of the works of the Holy Spirit Romero highlighted was the transmission of the “unique priesthood of Christ, who is also king and prophet” to those who have been baptized, a transmission that “enables them to be a priestly, royal and prophetic people.” We don’t tend to remember and don’t always take seriously the idea that when we were baptized, we received an anointing with chrism as “a visible representation of the fact that this child of the flesh was incorporated into the Church, into the People of God, into this priestly, royal and prophetic people.” Yet it is something that is important to remember
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Priest, Prophet and King
This is the kind of question that can easily become a strongly held conviction. But should it? Well, people do benefit from seeing the text, and seeing it in the same translation as the speaker, and without the hassles, distraction, or potential embarressment of having to look it up in their own Bible, which of course, they may not have. On the other hand, people who don’t need to bring their Bibles to church, won’t bring their Bibles to church, and won’t develop the ability to look up references, nor to see passages in their contexts – instead getting used to the idea that verses stand alone in picturesque vacuums
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Should Bible Text Be Projected?
What began as a messy divorce between father and son, debt at Crystal Cathedral causing the lights to get cut off and then Dad thinking his son can do his own power thing and Girl Schuller can do it, has now led to this: Dad is “retiring”. Or is he
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Robert Schuller is hanging up the robe… again?
Union Missionary Baptist Church Request free DVD or CD of this message from genebrooks@yahoo.com. Include your mailing address. Opening thought : It is no secret that we are living in desperate times.
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Isaiah 13-20: Hope in the midst of the storm
The Rev. Robert H. Schuller, founder of Southern California’s Crystal Cathedral megachurch and host of the Hour of Power televangelism broadcast, announced Sunday he will retire as lead pastor after 55 years in the pulpit and his daughter will take over.
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Hour of Power pastor Robert Schuller retiring
Randall Stephens A review essay in the July 2 issue of the TLS is well worth the read (though it doesn’t appear to be on-line). It gives some perspective on whatever counts as “secularization” in the United States.
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Everything is Bigger than Jesus in England
Todays’ guest post comes from Matt Bowman , a Ph.D. candidate at Georgetown University who normally blogs at Juvenile Instructor. Matt follows up on my post from Friday focusing on the theological motifs in Dan Gilbert’s open letter to Cleveland Cavaliers fans.
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Gilbert’s Jeremiad of LeBron the False Prophet, Part II
Forty-four percent of Americans have changed their religious affiliation, many joining a different denomination from the one in which they were raised or abandoning organized religion altogether, according to the 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
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Open invitation
A report sharply critical of Israel could have led to a fight within the church. But the General Assembly averts a battle by toning down some of the language. A week ago, the Presbyterian Church USA seemed headed for a bruising, polarizing battle over a report on the Middle East that sharply criticized Israel
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Presbyterian Church finds middle ground in Middle East debate
Paul Harvey In The Book , David Wallace-Wells has a nice review of a book that will interest some of you, especially you colonialists and economic history types: Nick Bunker, Make Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and their World . I haven’t read this book, but the review is interesting, and ends with a nice passage: The unfortunate emphasis in Making Haste on pilgrim entrepreneurship, and its pointed disinterest in Calvinist theology, is telling, and natural enough. Though the United States remains in some sense a Christian nation—churchgoing, evangelical, exceptionalist—the strange theology of our Puritan forebears is far more foreign to us, and far more difficult to reckon with, than their scuffling pre-market mercantilism.
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By the Rivers of Babylon, where the Pilgrims Wept
Paul Harvey While some of you reprobates were out testing the new micro-beer selections on the 4th of July, some of us were putting our long personal nightmare (a book manuscript) finally to post and ready to be shipped out for its deployment — at long last! (I tested out a new bottle of Old Raj gin, the best bottle of alcohol God ever invented, at the end of all this, so I’ll have to join the reprobate category). Our contributor John Fea was finishing up his book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction; and yes, John, finishing is a good feeling
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Finishing the Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (I’ll Drink to That!)