Why do people give? Is it really to make the world a better place, to give back to the community as a token of gratitude? Or is giving instead about something less grand, like seeing your name on a building, responding to peer pressure or simply feeling good about yourself? To put it bluntly, is charitable giving a high-minded form of consumption?
Once the federal government declined to establish a church and the states moved to disestablish (Massachusetts was the last, in 1833), religious belief grew. “No doubt exists that there is much more of religion among us now than there ever was before the change,” John Madison wrote. “This proves rather more … that the law is not necessary to the support of religion.
Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.
In 2005, when a Jewish gay-marriage activist first pressed California rabbis to sign a statement supporting full marriage equality for gays and lesbians, only a handful of Conservative rabbis lent their names. Over the course of the past two months, however, more than a dozen Conservative rabbis here have signed on to a growing list of clergy who support gay marriage in the civil realm.
A gunman entered a Jewish yeshiva library in Gaza tonight and opened fire, killing at least eight and wounding several more. News reports are all over the place (some say two gunmen, and casualty counts vary), but according to the New York Times relating information from the Israeli police, a lone gunman was killed by a part-time student and some passing security guards.
If you read last week the letter from Bishop Sisk giving advance warning of a forthcoming story from the New Yorker in which Honor Moore recounts details of her father’s private life–an excerpt from the late Bishop Paul Moore’s daughter’s forthcoming autobiographical work–you might be wondering, so, ok, there’s the horse, but where’s the cart?
Controversy over a liturgy to bring the Millennium Development Goals into focus during this Lenten season has caught the attention of Christianity Today. The liturgy, which was developed in 2007 by Mike Angell for a young adult conference; Angell notes in the piece that he did not intend it to replace the traditional stations of the cross. But EGR executive director Mike Kinman says that the increased awareness of how many children die every day helps us understand the suffering that still exists in the world.
Episcopal Divinity School has announced a new partnership with Lesley University and made an official announcement about the resignation of Dean Steven Charleston.
As new ways of connecting and engaging with faith community emerge, defining what is “unchurched” becomes a good deal more complicated, as noted in a new Barna Group research study. It goes on to say that also noted that churchgoers are more likely to interact with faith community in new ways, such as through web sites or special ministry events.
If evangelical Christianity were identical to any political movement, something would be badly wrong. It is supposed to look toward a kingdom not of this world, one without borders, flags or end. And by this standard, homelessness is a natural state.