Truth be told, I had already decided to take a second look at the faith ghosts in the coverage of the death of screen legend Patricia Neal before I read the following from Deacon John M. Bresnahan, a conservative Catholic who is a regular in our comments pages.
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Patricia Neal and her angels (Take 2)
GetReligion reader Duane Shank, a Mennonite who grew up in Lancaster County, Pa., passed along a link to a front-page Philadelphia Inquirer story on the Mennonite tradition of service. Tied to the massacre of 10 medical aid workers — including Glen Lapp, a Mennonite — in Afghanistan last week, the piece drew praise from Shank. He nominated writers Amy Worden and David O’Reilly as journalists who “get religion”: This piece is one of the first I’ve seen in a mainstream paper that understands the nuances of Mennonites
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Hands and feet of Jesus?
Satanic cults constitute a world in which evil reigns, so keeping them clandestine is essential.
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Difficult to escape, abusive Satanic cults exist in the shadows of society
In Lumen Gentium , promugated in 1962, Pope Paul VI spoke about martyrdom, suggesting that while few of us will be called upon to lay down our life in imitation of Christ, we who call ourselves Chritians must always “be prepared to confess Christ before men.” One of the risks of holding up Christ’s supreme self-sacrifice as a model is that we think we have to do really big things to live up to that model. Then, finding ourselves unable to perform big deeds, we are discouraged. In a homily he gave on May 15, 1977, Oscar Romero talked about the need to possess a “spirit of martyrdom” – a willingness to give up our lives for God – and about what it means to do so
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Spirit of Martyrdom
How I missed this one in the Christian Post, Wall Watchers, I have no idea… but back in later July, an esteemed junior college or remedial high school Augusta State University threatened one student, “Change your Christian beliefs or you won’t graduate.” Seriously… any more questions about my theory on Christianity being the only legalized
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Augusta State University: “Change your beliefs or don’t graduate!”
For Muslims such as Omar Younis, observance of the holy month of Ramadan is one of the few religious rituals they still follow. They’re likened to Christmas Christians. As men and women in makeshift togas danced and jumped to booming house music, Omar Younis made out with a woman he had met just a few hours earlier at her 25th-birthday dinner
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When piety cuts into the partying
Yesterday I shared about the contrast between the attention of the crowd one night and the significant distraction the next night – same venue, same weather, same chairs, different speaker. Perhaps something here might be helpful to you. Why were they distracted? 1.
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Why Did the Coughs Spread?
Inpreparation for Ramadan, which began in Houston on Wednesday, shoppers at a Muslim grocery store loaded their carts with flatbreads, halal meats, olives, cheeses and dried fruits. It may seem funny to get ready for a month of fasting by buying groceries, but at the end of each day without food or water, Muslims gather with friends, family or neighbors to share a meal
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Fasting during Ramadan to nourish the spirit
Q: I attended a top-tier acting program at a large state university, completing all my theater classes but not acquiring enough credits for my B.F.A. I left after my fourth year and now work as an actor. No degree is required for acting jobs, but potential employers might see my not having graduated as an inability to complete a task.
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On Ethics: College program head reveals too much about ex-student
A New Zealand woman died as a result of accidental drowning by way of manslaughter, Wellington regional coroner Ian Smith has found. His finding came almost a year after five members of the 22-year-old woman’s family were sentenced for their parts in her death, on October 12, 2007.
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Woman died from ‘accidental drowning’ during exorcism
Atheism has become a religion of its own, with its main goal to prevent anyone from displaying any belief in God in public. I don’t know if it is a sin for Muslims to hear a prayer to God, but if it is, they are in the wrong country.
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Beverly Marrocco: Atheists Should "Tolerate" Christian Privilege
It’s always interesting to see what stories reporters jump on and which are ignored. This has actually been a good year for coverage of changes in religious affiliation , thanks to some major studies on the matter. Here’s a CNN piece headlined “Study: Young Americans less religious than their parents,” for instance
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What does religious loyalty look like?
President Obama yesterday issued a statement ( full text ) extending best wishes to Muslims in the United States and around the world on the occasion of the start of Ramadan. He said that Ramadan rituals “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings. Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality.
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White House Issues Greetings On Start of Ramadan
There was a video floating around on the internet the other day, a video purportedly sent to everyone in a workplace of a woman who was using the video to explain her decision to quit her job. The video ridiculed her supervisor, who had belittled her.
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Tell Him His Fault Between You and Him Alone
‘Pretty Woman’ star Julia Roberts, who recently converted to Hinduism, says she took up the religion because she was intrigued by it.
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I was intrigued by Hinduism: Julia Roberts
As a speaker you should be able to sense the level of focus of your listeners. Before you say they always listen well, I would encourage you to follow this advice. Try being in the crowd and listening, observing, sensing what is going on around you among the listeners. If you have the privilege of attending a conference or large Christian event, you should have the privilege of experiencing the crowd from within the crowd with different speakers. Large crowd events are helpful because the large numbers both multiply and muffle. That is, in a small group there may be an individual who never listens – proportionately they are more of a small group than they’d be in a big group. Equally, it is quite the effect to sense distraction spread through a large crowd. What happens?
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When the Coughs Drop
The number of Christians in the country has hit a record 23.05 million in 2010, according to a survey released on Wednesday by the institute of world religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
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Survey: Over 23 million Christians in China
http://www.WatchMojo.com video guide on the most popular religions of the world.
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Guide to Religions – Buddhism
http://www.WatchMojo.com video guide on the most popular religions of the world.
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Guide to Religions – Judaism
Long ago, when I was the religion-beat reporter and columnist for the Rocky Mountain News (please pause for a moment of silence), I thought that one of the most interesting stories in town was the growth of the local congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. This was the 1980s and AIDS was a topic that dominated the news and bled over into all kinds of different subjects, including — obviously — religion
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Chip off the old mainline?
It’s a tough category, to be sure, but Lona O’Connor wins the prize for the worst story I’ve ever seen about female, non-Roman Catholic priests. It ran in the Palm Beach Post and it’s just absolutely embarrassing from top to bottom. Here’s the lede, which I do not believe is satire: Like the first Christians, they are outcasts
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Serving outrage soup for female priests
Many people believe in old myths that contradict other beliefs and scientific evidence, and this causes division. Religious dogmas and myths were created before people had the benefit of modern science. Science attempts to objectively discover how life works, and religion attempts to subjectively find a way to live in harmony with life, so they both have pieces to the same puzzle.
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The certainty of truth
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert early this evening signed an extradition warrant that will send polygamous church leader Warren S
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Utah governor signs extradition request for cult leader Warren Jeffs
Someone has said that you know it was a good sermon when you find yourself asking how the preacher knew all about you. That’s a nice sentiment that points to the importance of applicational relevance in preaching. Now allow me to give you my statement. This is not a complete statement, or a forever statement. It’s a today statement. I heard a great sermon this morning. (This post was written a couple of weeks back at Keswick, in case you’re wondering!) So I heard a great sermon. Here’s my statement, “you know it was a good sermon when twelve hours later you find yourself still pondering the powerful but simple take home truth, reminiscing over the clear images used to drive home the main points, reflecting on how engaged you felt by the message and the messenger, how excited you were, and still are, to look at the text, to pray through all that hit home, to take stock of your life in light of the text, to respond and be transformed by the message.” That’s my sentiment tonight that points to the importance of so knowing your text that you can take listeners by the hand and enter into it fully, of so thinking through your presentation that you have clear and concise main thoughts, an overwhelming master idea, an engaging manner of delivery, a contagious energy in presentation, a reliance on the Lord to move in peoples’ lives, and a targeted relevance to the listeners before you. Simple really, pull those things together and you’ll probably preach a decent message!
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Simply Good Preaching
Paul Harvey Don’t miss our contributor Christopher Jones’s piece over at Juvenile Instructor : ” ‘ Owned by the White People’: America and Native Americans in Church History Sunday School Lessons, 1934. ” Going through some boxes of old material while packing and moving, Chris reflects on Mormon providentialist interpretations, as communicated in Sunday School lessons, on the founding of America, and on relations with Native peoples. Some of it is kind of standard-issue stuff for that period: heroic and virtuous Pilgrims, God preparing the way for the coming of our Christian civilization, and so on.
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Owned by the White People
In today’s Gospel from St. John, Jesus tells his disciples that “unless a grain of wheat fall to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it does, it produces much fruit.” The first thing that comes to mind when one hears that passage is Jesus’ own death and resurrection.
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Letting the Grains of Wheat Fall to the Ground
I suspect somewhere in more than a thousand posts on here, I have mentioned once or twice about the importance of unity in a message. Order is often present, if only by virtue of the progression of the text. Progress is sort of present, inasmuch as the number of verses are running out, as is the available time. But all too often, in preaching in some circles, the sense of unity is negligible or just plain vague. Too many messages are essentially a series of points united by a common textual source and a title. This is not the inherent unity that is there in the text. Often messages are essentially a vague-subject completed. Three things about our title. Four aspects of such and such. This is not really reflecting the unity that is present in a unit of thought. Sometimes I wonder if we might be forcing texts into sermonic structures, rather than structuring sermons in such a way as to effectively communicate the texts
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Have I Mentioned This Before?