The Economist has a fascinating essay on whether it makes sense to allow the sale of transplant organs. Would this increase the supply of donated organs? Would it save more lives? Or would it cause the exploitation of the very poor?
An atheist soldier who accused U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Defense Department of violating his religious freedom dropped the lawsuit Friday, citing his plans to leave the Army next spring.
I can respond to all the myriad small demands each day presents only if I never stop moving. I can hold chaos at bay only by breaking each moment into as many pieces as possible, hoping almost desperately that there will be enough to go around, that I can spread myself thin enough to cover it all.
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man from Casper, Wyoming, who was severely beaten, tied to a fence and left to die in a remote area east of Laramie, where he was attending college. The Rev. Susan Russell points us to a remembrance and reflection from her colleague the Rev. Michael Hopkins, who knew Shepard personally and was president of IntegrityUSA at the time of Shepard’s death.
The Pew Forum features Yuval Levin and Todd Gitlin exploring the idea that there is always a cultural war behind US politics. Although with slightly different descriptions of the “war” both see it as longstanding and foundational in the US.
“Has Rowan Williams actually been to a service in an Episcopal church since he became Archbishop?” a friend asked me recently. Perhaps he has, but I could not think of an occasion.
In a letter mailed last week to national and local church leaders, Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, who has disciplinary authority over the Seattle priest, said a church committee had determined that the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding “abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church by formal admission into a religious body not in communion with the Episcopal Church.”
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The love of God is not fair. No, the love of God is not fair. It’s more than that, it’s enormous, it’s gracious, it’s true, no matter what. Paul knows this. He writes about the love of God from prison, and while he knows that neither life nor the love of God are fair, they are indeed much more important than that.
Evangelism is fundamentally a spiritual practice, as important to our spiritual health as prayer, worship, fellowship, and study. As such, evangelism is not simply an act or a set of Christian techniques. It is not a programmatic effort or a formulaic recitation of a memorized speech.