Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past three decades of social science research.
Lost in all of the news about the deposition of Bishop Bennison and the actions of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, was a rather important event in the history of the Episcopal Church. Yesterday more than 500 worshippers from across the nation, including over 12 Bishops, took part in a service of public atonement for the Episcopal Church’s silence about slavery.
I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him,” the book begins. Julian Barnes, an atheist turned agnostic, has decided at the age of 62 to address his fear of death — why should an agnostic fear death who has no faith in an afterlife? How can you be frightened of Nothing? On this simple question Barnes has hung an elegant memoir and meditation, a deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter.
As the United States staggers from its credit binge to a straitened future, the religious holidays demand their own form of self-denial. Jews fast on Yom Kippur and, for the most observant, the Fast of Gedalia, which comes the day after Rosh Hashana. Devout Muslims did not take food or drink during daylight hours for the entire month of Ramadan, which ended this week.
When chatter about candidates and platforms fills the airwaves, when everyone pontificates about the last debate or recent TV appearance, you can seem out of touch with reality or too timid if you don’t join in the national conversation and take a public stand. Who wants to go to a church led by an irrelevant coward?
Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh (PEP) and Across the Aisle, two groups formed in opposition to the departure of the diocese from the Episcopal Church, have posted their reactions to today’s events. (Updated 7:30 p.m.)
Timothy O’Toole has a column in today’s Albany Union-Times on the abundance and diversity of church music. “Most hymnals have work derived from European sources, but America is blessed with an exceptional variety of home-grown music. Drawing from Charles Wesley’s English experience, what was once secular can become sacred with a few lyric modifications,” he writes.
The vote to leave has passed in both orders. Bishop Duncan has been appointed to serve in Pittsburgh until a special election convention next month.
Joe Eszterhas is infamous for having penned the screenplay for one of Hollywood’s worst movies, the raunchy Showgirls that, after a much-hyped release in 1995 (mostly owing to its NC-17 rating) tanked on the big screen—only to become a camp classic in its video-release afterlife. But now he’s writing about something different: after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001, he sat down in a moment of despair and found a part of him asking for God’s help.
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.