Said de Tocqueville, “America is great because America is good. If she ceases to be good, she ceases to be great.” With less power, we Americans will be better able to be good, both to ourselves and to others. I have great confidence in America. We are still a young country, with lots of raw energy.
David Gushee writes: “In light of the hatred, mockery, loathing, fear and rejection directed at homosexuals in our society — and in our churches — I hope to God that I am not and never have been a perpetrator. But I fear I have indeed been a bystander. I am trying to figure out what it might mean to be a rescuer.”
US Courts have repeatedly decreed that creationism and intelligent design are religion, not science, and have no place in school science classes. Try telling that to American high-school teachers – 1 in 8 teach the ideas as valid science, according to the first national survey on the subject
In their study, which appears in the May 2008 edition of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Gruber and Hungerman show what happens when religious services must compete with shopping, hobbies and other activities.
Catholics are sacramental in a way that is profoundly different from the way Protestants are sacramental. If a hospital patient asks the chaplain for communion, the chaplain can be 99 percent certain that the patient is Roman Catholic. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other Christians may say that they give equal weight to word and sacrament or that communion is a central part of their faith, but how many, when they go into the hospital, ask for the sacrament?
How do you prepare yourself to write the Declaration of Independence? On what was Thomas Jefferson nourishing his mind and soul? His account books reveal that on May 24 Jefferson paid someone named Hillegas twenty-seven shillings for fiddle strings. May 27, Jefferson spent “one and seven” for toys.
The Wenatchee World, the “fiercely independent voice of North Central Washington,” offers up some local wisdom about the Episcopal Church in the form of five bullet-points from the Rev. Patton Boyle of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Wenatchee.
Commentary from USA Today this week posits that mainline megachurches might be the solution to declining mainline churches—or does it? Once you read past the lede, you’ll find the piece takes a closer look at the phenomenon and doesn’t buy the oft-touted explanation that all our mainline people have run away to more conservative havens. In fact, with all the attention raining down on mainline churches as a result of renewed focus on faith on the Democratic side of the political process, signs are pointing to hope for these churches.
The Diocese of Albany convention in June will consider two resolutions on marriage and the priesthood. Featured speakers at the convention include the Coordinating Bishop
In preparation for this year’s Rolling Thunder event, where hundreds of thousands of bikers descend on the nation’s capital in honor of fallen and missing heroes, several thousand strong showed up in New Jersey for the Motorcycle Mass, led by a Catholic priest, Father Mark Giordani. He’s actually been doing this since long before Rolling Thunder, now in its 21st year, began: Giordani, himself a biker, started the tradition 39 years ago.