USA Today takes a look at the phenomenon of podcasting sermons and other faith-related content, with commentary focusing on editorial practices that keep the message on target, however subjective the target might be. The article looks as sites such as God’s iPod (which, it should be noted, now has an application called God’s iPhone), SermonAudio, GodTube, and RabbiPod.
For many Episcopalians—indeed, many people of faith, every day is Earth Day. The Rev. Sally Bingham founded Interfaith Power and Light (then Episcopal Power and Light) in 1998 as an initiative to allow churches to purchase renewable energy and is part of The Regeneration Project, an “interfaith ministry devoted to deepening the connection between ecology and faith.”
Several national hierarchical churches denominations, including the United Methodist Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, filed an amicus curie (or “friend of the court”) brief yesterday supporting the position of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia that the §57-9 division statute of the Virginia Code “cannot withstand constitutional challenge.”
One Good Friday in the 1980s or early 1990s, Krister preached the entire Seven Last Words of Jesus service at Harvard’s Memorial Church. After the service, one of us asked him whether he might be willing to part with a copy of his text. “I had no notes,” he said simply. So we carry his wisdom in our memories and into our own times in pulpit and classroom.
As Passover of 2008 commences Saturday night, Mr. Weininger, along with Ian Chesir-Teran, is one of two gay rabbinical students at J.T.S., as the seminary is routinely known. Their presence has essentially, if not always easily, settled decades of roiling debate within the Conservative movement over homosexual members of the clergy.
During an election year in which immigration is sure to play a significant role, a film like The Visitor is utterly refreshing. Far from a heavy-handed, agit-prop polemic, this is a film that asks us simply to humanize the issue. Christians have long preached (but not always practiced) the importance of loving people, first and foremost—despite their race or culture or religion. The Visitor shows us just how lovely and healing this idea—in practice—can be.
In the usual telling of the tale, Joseph Ratzinger went from being a progressive reformer at the Second Vatican Council to being God’s reactionary Rottweiler as the Catholic Church’s chief doctrinal authority under John Paul II. That standard account misses the truth about the Bavarian theologian who has become Pope Benedict XVI.
The debate over the proper relationship between religion and politics often focuses on whether religious influence in the public square is a good thing or bad thing for the nation. Evangelical Charles Marsh has written a new book, Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel From Political Captivity that argues that undue political involvement has been bad for the faith.
At a Roman Catholic church in Manhattan, the pope later warned other Christian leaders against “so-called prophetic actions” that conflict with traditional views of the Bible, a reference to the debate over Scripture that is fracturing churches in America and around the world.
The 81-year-old pope, who was a young German prisoner in the war that forged the United Nations, insisted that human rights — more than force or pragmatic politics — must be the basis for ending war and poverty. “The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security,” Benedict told the United Nations General Assembly.