The advert, depicting a nativity scene, showed four wise men – rather than the more usual three – visiting Mary and Baby Jesus in their Bethlehem manger. As well as the traditional gold, frankincense and myrrh brought as gifts, the fourth Magus offers the young Messiah a can of Red Bull.
Is the Archbishop of Canterbury really cross in a graphic sort of way? Or is his homepage in need of a cleansing?
The last weekend of October found me in Sydney, Australia, as a tourist. A Saturday visit to St. Andrew’s Cathedral left me feeling incredulous. It was my first visit to an Anglican church that did not have at least one altar. I felt as if I had stumbled upon a contemporary evangelical congregation from the free-church tradition worshipping in what had once been an Anglican cathedral.
Bridle of colts untamed,
Over our will presiding;
Wing of unwandering birds,
Our flight securely guiding.
I got to teach Episcopal Sunday school last week, a rare privilege, and it was in a New York church so the kids had plenty to say. Teenagers, and if you expect them to sit in rapt silence as you tick off points of theology, you’re in the wrong place. – Garrison Keillor
A Jewish record label (JDub Records) is putting on a multi-city music festival featuring acts performing “klezmer-punk, hip-hop in Arabic and folk-rock tunes” this weekend for Hanukkah, which starts today at sundown. The event is expected to draw some 7,000 people in nine cities, according to a Washington Post article about the event.
Phyllis Tickle is featured in this week’s article from syndicated columnist Terry Mattingly. Citing the “500 year wall,” he summarizes Tickle’s recent discussion of all the capital-letter, civilization-rearranging events in history and their tendency to happen about every half-millennium or so: The Reformation, the Great Schism, the Fall of the Roman Empire.
Fox Entertainment Group has successfully acquired Beliefnet.com, which is generally regarded as providing “interesting, multi-faith religion content,” as DallasNews blogger Jeffrey Weiss puts it.
Her father signed a pledge to be the protector of her purity and to live his own life with integrity. She gave her father a gold key to her heart, and asked him to hold on to it until her wedding day, when he would hand it over to her husband. They walked down the aisle with locked arms and she laid a white rose beside a cross, sealing her commitment.
If the international community is to stave off the most serious consequences of climate change and the impact already being felt in the world’s poorest communities, it needs to do more than reduce global carbon emissions, according to European Church leaders.