The Christian bookstore you shop at tomorrow may be as close as your church’s front door. More and more churches want to be the place you’ll buy your next Beth Moore book or study Bible. Church bookstores enjoy prime locations, low overhead, and (in many cases) volunteer workers.
Richard Bookhiser praises Steven Waldman’s “Founding Faith” in todays New York Times Book Review.
Two men, two speeches. The men, both lawyers, both from Illinois, were seeking the presidency, despite what seemed their crippling connection with extremists. Each was young by modern standards for a president. Abraham Lincoln had turned fifty-one just five days before delivering his speech. Barack Obama was forty-six when he gave his. Their political experience was mainly provincial, in the Illinois legislature for both of them, and they had received little exposure at the national level—two years in the House of Representatives for Lincoln, four years in the Senate for Obama.
While you will not find the spiritual lessons in Prince Caspian quite as obvious as those you remember from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, you will find plenty of profound truths about the Christian faith—delivered in a way that only the master, C. S. Lewis, could do.
The Virginia case could have implications reaching far beyond these churches in Virginia. Other denominations could be affected if secular courts start making decisions about church governance. And what happens once we start down that slippery slope? This is the focus of an editorial from a newspaper based in Tidewater, Va.
Dr. Jenny Te Paa, a Maori theologian, presented the second keynote at the Anglican Communion Conference this week at General Theological seminary. The Rev. Susan Russell, blogging at the event, made an interesting observation about what she saw unfold between Te Paa and Archbishop Drexel Gomez as a result of Te Paa’s critique of the covenant process.
The Seattle Times has a Q&A on Katharine Jefferts Schori, noting that her participation in the “Healing Our Planet Earth” conference signals how she is merging her vocations as a former oceanographer and presently as Presiding Bishop.
Some of our number have been in Seattle this weekend, not for the numerous faith conferences and festivals but for the Episcopal Communicators Conference. Exploring the theme of “”Emerging Communications for an Emerging Church,” several speakers talked about the role of communications in ministry in these times. The Cafe was also recognized in the 28th Annual Polly Bond Awards.
RNS has a piece on Episcopalian monastery life, noting that “unlike Catholic counterparts, they enjoy independence from church hierarchy.” The article points out how many people don’t realize there are Anglican or Protestant orders, and gives a short summary of the history of monasticism during and since the Reformation. Central to the revival of monastic practices was the influence of women in the latter of the 19th century, according to the article.
A certain amount of gloss and mythology is inevitable for great figures, whether they be George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, Honest Abe splitting a rail or Dr. King preaching a dream of equal citizenship in 1963. Far beyond that, however, we have encased Dr. King and his era in pervasive myth, false to our heritage and dangerous to our future. We have distorted our entire political culture to avoid the lessons of Martin Luther King’s era.