Ann Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes: Although much about San Joaquin’s experience is unique, its story is instructive about the problems that may lie ahead for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, which will vote Saturday on whether to join San Joaquin in seceding.
I grow uneasy –and suspicious– when spiritual advisors talk about their pastoral relationships with candidates Jeremiah Wright’s speech to the NAACP was profoundly distressing and obviously embarrassing to the candidate. I had the same problem with a New York Times front page article a few weeks ago featuring an interview with Sarah Palin’s pastor. Are they doing it with the candidates’ permission? Or if not, whose agenda is being furthered?
Sleight-of-hand magic is based on the demonstrable fact that as a rule people see only what they expect to see. Angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to wish us well. Since we don’t expect to see them, we don’t.
Somewhere in my attic there is a fading copy of a campus newspaper from 1967—my first year as a law professor at the University of Mississippi. The headline, as I recall, says “Negro to Address Ole Miss Class.” In the space of my own adulthood, a world in which a guest lecture by a black man was a front-page news story has morphed into a world in which a person of color will be speaking on the Rebel campus tonight as a candidate for president of the United States.
Despite what some critics assume, Brian McLaren, the most controversial of emergent leaders, does not represent all things emerging. But he does represent the more progressive wing, and his latest books offer a glimpse of where that movement might be heading.
Economics has given us a lot of better words, from self-interest to incentive to profit. They do not mean the same thing as greed, but they have displaced it, obscured it — and certainly demoted it from being a deadly sin.
As we previously reported, today is “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”, a day designated by the Alliance Defense Fund for ministers and other religious leaders to challenge the half century IRS prohibition on political speech by churches. To challenge that rule, several pastors plan to defy the ban by making endorsements from the pulpit. And, as we previously reported, many other religious leaders have challenged the wisdom of this challenge.
No one can enter into their deepest centre
and pass through that centre into God,
unless they are able to pass entirely out of themselves
Anglican churches across Britain hope to attract up to 30,000 new faces on Sunday after a drive to extend personal invitations to would-be worshippers.
Seventy years on, as we face a new year, forgetfulness reigns: yet more tyrants; yet more victims. And so, the summons of “the birthday of the world” seems ever more urgent – not just for Jews, but also for humanity.