Tag: Religion in America

“Relativism and fundamentalism seem, at first sight, to be direct opposites. Rather, I think, they are two sides of the same coin. Both are rooted in the same distinctly modern phenomenon. Modernization progressively undermines the closed communities in which human beings lived through most of history, communities in which there was a very high degree of consensus about the basic cognitive and normative definitions of reality.” – Peter Berger

It’s common enough that Christian universities hire Christian faculty, according to a front page article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education. Some places even require that one sign off on a “statement of faith” that includes doctrinal declarations about such things as Original Sin or the inerrancy of Scripture. But one Presbyterian university, Whitworth, in Spokane, Wash., tries to find a balance between the extremes of being a nominally Christian institution and dictating faith to its faculty, and requires that applicants write their own statement of faith as part of the application process.

We haven’t had a chance to keep up with the controversy surrounding the National Day of Prayer, but Frederick Clarskson of the blog Talk2Action has. He reports that: The franchise to host official, and often controversial Day- related events is held by Shirley Dobson, wife of James. The official National Day of Prayer Taskforce operates out of the HQ of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs.

Today is the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech campus shootings that left 33 students and faculty dead and an entire community traumatized. Scott Russell, the Episcopal Campus Chaplain at the University has written a reflection on the experience.

After months of revived debate over divorce and its increasing acceptance among Americans, a new study affirmed born again Christians are just as likely as the average American couple to divorce.

Minto, Alaska, is home to about 180 people. While it’s situated less than 80 miles northwest of Fairbank as a bird flies, it takes nearly five hours to get there by car. As Christy McKerny of the Washington Post describes, accompanying the Rev. Bessie C. Titus on the drive to visit Minto’s new worship center was a breathtaking experience.

There have been a number of essays posted in the secular media over the past two weeks which have attempted to put the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons about racism in the United States into some sort of broader context. But there have also been a few helpful essays written from within the religious community.

Why is it that there is such a difference in the way the secular world celebrates the two major Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas? Christmas is so universally observed among people that preachers frequently worry about the secular elements creeping into the celebration. The Triduum (and Easter in particular) have resisted this secular appropriation. Why?