Hovering over the book is a small sense that, far from disproving the existence of God, this evolving doctrine might point merely to humankind’s slow education into the real nature of the divine.
A contracting national economy has led congregations across the religious spectrum to cut or downsize clergy positions, hire part-time lay people instead and delay filling vacancies. Veteran clergy members, watching their retirement accounts wither, are postponing retirement.
Ruth Weisberg at The Norton Simon
Christianity did not have to form such an easy and ultimately unholy alliance with industrialism, consumerism, and corporatism. There is another, subversive spirit that runs throughout our history, a strain of thought that provides a religious, ecological, and radically democratic alternative to where we are right now.
If respondents gained a Catholic friend over the course of the year, their feelings of warmth toward Catholics almost doubled. If respondents befriended an evangelical, then evangelicals as a group “completely closed the gap,” according to Mr. Campbell — meaning that they inspired neutral feelings instead of negative ones.
Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit writing in the Boston Review:
“This is my commandment.” Have you then only one precept? This is sufficient, even if it is unique and so great. Nevertheless he also said, “Do not kill,” because the one who loves does not kill. He said, “Do not steal,” because the one who loves does even more—he gives. He said, “Do not lie,” for the one who loves speaks the truth, against falsehood. “I give you a new commandment.”