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A few years ago I heard Bishop John Shelby Spong say the Bible is the story of pre-scientific, tribal people who lived before it was known that germs cause disease. He wasn’t denigrating the Bible. He was emphasizing that context should be considered when we read scripture. Obviously, context affected...
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I needed to break free two frozen screws to remove a solenoid from a starter motor. Lacking an impact driver, I went to the local Pep Boys auto store. I waited as a salesperson explained a tire sale to a customer. The customer weighed the prices and decided all were too expensive. He was a [...]
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Around three in the afternoon on July 2, three cable news networks simultaneously played and replayed a video of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal taken two days before his death. California was effectively bankrupt, issuing IOU’s for the first time since the Great Depression. Unemployment...
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As if fractured Somalia were not divided enough, a report this week says Islamic groups are realigning for renewed fighting. Somalia disintegrated 15 years ago when a corrupt government fell. Clan fighting plunged the country into anarchy and it’s remained there.
Jeffrey Gettleman writes in the...
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Institutions are necessary, desirable and, for all their faults and foibles, valuable. Here’s why. They can mobilize and when they do they achieve scale. They enhance capacity. They empower. In the case of religious institutions, they are expressions of missional theology. Mobilization isn’t...
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Institutions. We don’t like them or trust them. Sometimes we want to bring them down a notch or two. They’re cumbersome, territorial, political and dysfunctional. They’re always behind the times. It’s easy to dislike them.
Writing in the 19th Century about governing institutions...
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Can the U.S. move from a culture of instant gratification to deferred gratification? The question was inspired by a program on NPR this morning. From the car radio I went into a meeting where the same thing was being talked about.
There’s a lot of conversation and writing that says we’re...
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The worker from Eduador spoke of his family back home as he stood in the Home Depot parking lot in Washington, D.C. last week. His brow wrinkled and his voice broke. He’s a long way from home and his existence here is day-to-day precarious.
As I listened, I felt a tug of emotion as [...]
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The more often you attend church the more likely you are to approve torture. As startling as it sounds, if we are to believe the latest Pew research on religious attitudes, that’s the case.
This is just breath-taking. That a religious community would be favorable to torture, much less approve it...
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Athiests are coming out of the closet. And in South Carolina, no less; a place noted for the strength of its religious and political values, strongly conservative and deeply held. That’s the gist of the NY Times piece on "emerging" athiests and secular humanists.
A Pew study on religious...
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Rock Singer and humanitarian activist Bono asks about the state of our souls in this time of great change.
In a Sunday op-ed he recounts Easter worship on an unnamed island and discusses the need for new beginnings. He writes affectingly about his search in scripture and religion to discern the state...
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The Taliban have exploited class differences to gain control over the Swat Valley in Pakistan. The Dalit people, known as the "untouchables" in India’s caste-based social system, are throwing off oppressive discrimination to claim liberation.
These seemingly unrelated stories are woven...
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Referring back to the earlier discussion about a Post-Christian America, I found this commentary by Judith Warner relevant. Giving her first-person views of a mixed religious childhood, she quotes Charles Darwin who said if the brain is impressed early with a belief it holds onto it with an almost instinctive...
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The loss of the political agenda of the religious right and Christian dominionists is not a marker for the demise of Christianity in the U.S.
Writer Jon Meacham apparently felt the need to clarify further the point of his cover story in Newsweek which was provocatively headlined The End of Christian...
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As the economy continues downward, attention narrows and becomes more local. Much of what I’ve been reading lately treats the financial crisis as a U.S. issue. In doing research recently I looked at several statements about the crisis by religious groups in the U.S. In each case they referred exclusively...