There are many complaints believers and nonbelievers might level against God in the big Western city today, but one thing you have to concede is that He is supreme at keeping the places where is He is worshiped silent. The withdrawal of faith from the urban house of faith has left some awfully dark holes filled with glorious, ecumenical silence.
“By the end of 1936, the severe measures taken by the German bishops in reaction to these very few cases, some of which were doubtful, seemed to have resolved the real problems. Quietly, the bishops also pointed out that among teachers in the state schools and in the very youth organization of the regime, the Hitler Youth, the cases of condemnations for sexual abuses were much more numerous than among the Catholic clergy.”
Charisma — personal charm and magnetism — is a quality we look for in our leaders, including (especially?) the clergy. It’s not proven by this experiment, but it’s an interesting hypothesis that when we find someone charismatic the areas of the brain associated with vigilance and skepticism are deactivated. Charisma can be a force for good, but it can so easily be misused.
SB 1070 can be interpreted to make acts as simple as feeding the hungry at a church soup-kitchen, offering water on a 100°+ day, providing a pew to worship God, or even taking children of undocumented workers for a ride in a church-owned vehicle a felony offense.
Ms. Height is widely credited as the first person in the modern civil rights era to treat the problems of equality for women and equality for African-Americans as a seamless whole, merging concerns that had been largely historically separate. The seamless whole included gays.
What do homosexuality, health care reform, and British advertising standards all have in common? They’re all things that have ticked God off, some religious leaders
For Jefferts Schori, relatedness with others, including non-human “others,” leads naturally to a theology of compassion and activism. She is most concerned for the voiceless, the powerless, those, who in her words, exist “on the margins.” … “I read the gospels to say that Jesus is most passionate about those that are excluded.”
…this lumping of the world’s religions into one mega-religion is not just false and condescending, it is also a threat. How can we make sense of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir if we pretend that Hinduism and Islam are one and the same? Or of the impasse in the Middle East, if we pretend that there are no fundamental disagreements between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
Most young adults today don’t pray, don’t worship and don’t read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.