It seems that I had forgotten how important it is to be, shall we say, personal. Self-revelatory, at least a little. Open. Approachable. In short: myself (as opposed to being my job). It became clear that people were generally far more tolerant of whatever news I wanted to push on them when I was asking about them, and allowing myself to be asked about.
The Church Missionary Society had had for some years a station at Mombasa, on the coast, but when the discoverer Stanley, who had visited Uganda, told the story at home of his intercourse with King Mtesa and with his people there, they at once resolved to send a mission to Lake Victoria Nyanza and its neighbourhood.
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Pew Rearch has released an interesting survey that finds a strong relationship between a country’s religiosity and its economic status. In poorer nations, religion remains central to the lives of individuals, while secular perspectives are more common in richer nations. This relationship generally is consistent across regions and countries, although there are some exceptions, including most notably the United States, which is a much more religious country than its level of prosperity would indicate.
David Brooks has a provocative column this week on the effect of technology on human memory. Are we outsourcing our own thinking? Brooks seems to think so. According to Brooks, “the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.”
Fifty years ago this coming week, eighty white members of the Atlanta clergy issued a manifesto on race relations. Read fifty years later, the manifesto seems mild. At the time, however, it was viewed as a revolutionary document that resulted in more than one death threat.
Identity, vocation, and mission for Christians are not three separate realities, but are mutually dependent. Christian identity is realized through Christian mission. Mission defines and fulfills identity. Vocation, a word derived form the Latin verb vocare, “to call,” is the calling every Christian has both to be with God and to carry out God’s mission.
The Sunday Telegraph reports on an idea as if it is fact. The idea is that foreign bishops would be allowed to intervene in dioceses
Maggi Dawn has an interesting post that starts off addressing questions about Christology and the emerging church, and how the latter has received some criticism for not having enough of the former. She goes on from there, however, to address how we as Christians engage the non-Christian world we often find ourselves living in.
For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary by Daniel Karlsake about conservative Christian families coming to terms with their children’s homosexuality, had its Washington premier last night. The movie features interviews with Bishop Gene Robinson and his parents. Find out more about the film here.