The annual diocesan convention includes election of Standing Committee and Executive Council members, approval of the budget and resolutions. Among the eleven resolutions submitted in advance of convention are a resolution on conduct of clergy and a resolution calling for the creation of an equality commission. The business portion of convention is scheduled for October 25.
Christians in eastern Indian state of Orissa are being told “Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished, otherwise, you will be killed, or
What she didn’t tell worshippers gathered at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in her hometown was that her appearance that day came courtesy of Alaskan taxpayers, who picked up the $639.50 tab for her airplane tickets and per diem fees.
One of the best ways people can be the church together in a money-dominated age is to break the taboo against discussing money and money worries. If we are concerned with having enough money to care for others or ourselves, or with meeting payments, let’s confess those concerns to our brothers and sisters in a supportive setting. A burden confessed is a burden shared.
“Economic” thinking ignores our environment, and is clumsy in computing intangibles such as social order, feelings, religious values, and beauty. It disorients and dislocates culture, hypothesizing an economic man—a consumer and producer—who is unrecognizable to those of us who encounter the daily irrationality that makes up human behavior. Reprinted with permission of Anglican Theological Review.
I am lying on my back. Maybe I am in a crib or a baby carriage, but I am not on someone’s lap. I am alone but I am not lonely. My eyes are following the yellow-green sparkles of light through a hazy screen. My arms are free and my hands reach to touch what my eyes can see and my heart can feel. I feel breath in me and in the trees and gently whirling between us.
“In the academic as well as the popular imagination,” Dr. Sorkin writes, “the Enlightenment figures as a quintessentially secular phenomenon — indeed, as the very source of modern secular culture.” But contrary to this “secular master narrative,” he argues, “the Enlightenment was not only compatible with religious belief,” it actually generated new formulations of that belief.
Nearly 1,000 Christian families have fled their homes in Mosul since Friday, taking shelter on the northern and eastern fringes of Nineveh province, according to provincial governor Duraid Kashmula. He said the violence was the worst against Christians in five years.
A new national study by two Brigham Young University sociologists finds that religious involvement makes teens half as likely to use marijuana. “Some may think this is an obvious finding, but research and expert opinion on this issue have not been consistent,” said BYU sociology professor Stephen Bahr and an author on the study. “After we accounted for family and peer characteristics, and regardless of denomination, there was an independent effect that those who were religious were less likely to do drugs, even when their friends were users.”