Steven D. Martin’s film on the Institute on Religion and Democracy–Renewal or Ruin–is now available online at talk2.action.org. It’s an easy way to understand this organization, its donors and their campaign against mainline Protestantism.
Michael Gerson hasn’t learned that people who live in glass churches shouldn’t throw stones. In a recent column in The Washington Post, he took Barack Obama to task for his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while retaining his membership in the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which is led by the flamboyantly bigoted Archbishop Peter Akinola.
“I didn’t choose to be homeless. It just happened. I wish there were more resources out there to help us. It’s very hard out there to start over.”
Clergy representing Catholics, Protestants, and Jews gathered in Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco yesterday to offer prayers on the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Throughout the week, people from churches and synagogues throughout the Bay Area brought hundreds of pairs of boots and shoes to honor American and Iraqi casualties of the war.
Reflecting on the Obama-Wright controversy, the Right Rev. Greg Rickel, Episcopal Bishop of Olympia, noted that the “tragic past” remains personal for many. “We’re going to bring all the baggage of our lives into the conversation,” Rickel said. “A preacher brings life experiences to the pulpit. If we don’t deepen the dialogue, and be honest with each other, we’ll never get anywhere.”
Updated: 12:14 p.m. Barack Obama is speaking today in Philadelphia and responds to critics of his former pastor and his church. Excerpts from his speech
As MSNBC, CNN, and FOX endlessly play the tape of Rev. Wright’s “radical” sermons today, I do not hear the words of a “dangerous” preacher (at least any more dangerous than any preacher who takes the Gospel seriously!) No, I hear the long tradition that Jeremiah Wright has inherited from his ancestors. I hear prophetic critique.
His religion has often been best described as evangelical, but in various respects it appears not to conform to the definition. Unlike most other evangelicals, Bush blithely uses profanity and as governor would play poker. He doesn’t tithe. He didn’t try to convert others … even before he resumed a political career. He didn’t raise his daughters in his faith.
Ebo Patel: Whenever I’m on the radio or on television or giving a public talk about Islam and peace, I always get a bunch of questions from people who only associate two things with Islam – violence, and the absence of Muslims protesting violence. It’s like they were intentionally tuning out everything I said, even though they came to hear me speak.
The IRS has granted a three-week extension for the United Church of Christ to respond to an investigation the agency has begun because presidential candidate