The Archive

Year: 2008

Love Life Live Lent

February 3, 2008 No Comments

Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu are backing a church Facebook group urging members to find time in their busy lives to complete 50 actions over the seven weeks of Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday next week. The aim is “to help you become a better neighbour and transform your world for the better”. Actions include polishing someone’s shoes on Maundy Thursday, a reference to Jesus’s washing of the feet of His Disciples; making someone laugh; and leaving a thank-you note for the postman.

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New translation of Psalms

February 3, 2008 1 Comment

Robert Alter has published a new translation of the Book of Psalms that attempts to offer a translation that is truer to the original Hebrew. Why do we need a new translation? As Adam Kirch argues in a New Republic book review, most English translations of the Psalms take a distinctively Christian point of view that distorts the original meaning of the Psalms.

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PBS on Wilberforce

February 3, 2008 1 Comment

February 23, 2007 marked the 200th anniversary of the British Parliment’s vote to ban the slave trade. But the recognition of William Wilberforce, who lead an often lonely campaign to end the slave trade is not over. This month PBS stations will air The Better Hour: The Legacy of William Wilberforce.

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Exodus and transfiguration

February 3, 2008 No Comments

Consider one of the central symbols of the Bible: the exodus from Egypt. It recurs again and again in both the Old and New Testaments. At first the symbol may work on us by inviting us to explore in prayer the implications of the historic event itself.

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A new Evangelical agenda?

February 2, 2008 No Comments

In a paradoxical recent poll, 65 percent of respondents said that Christian right leaders “sometimes or almost always represent their views.” Yet 60 percent said “they favored a more progressive evangelical agenda focused more on protecting the environment, tackling HIV/AIDs, and alleviating poverty and less on abortion and homosexuality.”

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Post-partisan Episcopalians?

February 2, 2008 No Comments

How should liberals respond to the fact that key conservative priests are deserting their schismatic bishops? One can simultaneously delight in the fact that increasing numbers of conservative Episcopalians are choosing to remain in the Church, while worrying that this might mean a return to business as usual in dioceses that have long worked to marginalize gays and women.

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New bishop for Rochester

February 2, 2008 No Comments

The Rev. Dr. Prince Singh was elected February 2 to be the next bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester. Singh was ordained a priest in the Church of South India in 1990. CSI was inaugurated in 1947 by the union of the South India United Church, the southern Anglican diocese of the Church of India, Burma, Ceylon, and the Methodist Church in South India.

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Is “Lost” spiritual?

February 2, 2008 4 Comments

The folks at Beliefnet have created a gallery to Lost’s twelve most “spiritual” moments. But does the show have an identifiable spiritual stance, or do its writers, in true post modern fashion, use whatever motifs are out there to keep their narrative humming along? The character John Locke, is frequently described as a man of faith. But what exactly is it that he believes in?

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Religious right not on the march

February 2, 2008 2 Comments

According to a poll, the number of North Americans who believe that the Bible is “the actual word of God” has fallen from 65 per cent in 1963 to just 27 per cent in 2001. Attitudes among Americans toward homosexuality, sex out of marriage and censorship are also growing steadily more liberal. Abortion is the major exception; younger Americans tend to be more opposed to abortion than their elders.

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