"A few days before Christmas, pastor Mike Sares got a call from his associate. “Mike,” he said, “Mary Kate Makkai has agreed to read one of her poems at the Christmas Eve service. It’s really, really good, but it’s got the F-bomb in it several times, and I just thought I should check with you about that.”"
"Copts will long remember Friday, October 21, as a night of terror, flame, and violence in Alexandria. Late that evening, thousands of rioting Muslims targeted three poorly protected Protestant congregations and an Orthodox church in the Muharram Bey section of Alexandria. Muslims were venting their anger over a video of a Christian play, produced at an Orthodox church. Muslims allege the video defamed Islam.
Days after the violence, I visited Christian congregations all over Alexandria and found everyday believers in a state of anxiety and shock over the attacks. Muslim-Christian violence, they told me, was something that happened in poor areas of Cairo or rural Upper Egypt, not Alexandria."
"My expectations have been raised to this ridiculous level by technology running amok through my heretofore-bucolic existence. I used to be a laid-back guy. Now I'm impatient. I chafe. I get irritable when my gratification isn't instantaneous. And it isn't just me. The whole world is bitchier these days.
I'm old enough to remember when waiting a few days for a letter to arrive was standard operating procedure, even in the bare-knuckles business world. I recall a time without answering machines, when you just had to keep calling back on your rotary phone until someone picked up. (Which had the unintended benefit of allowing you to reconsider whether the original call was even worth making in the first place.) The world moved at a more leisurely pace and, humanistically speaking, we were all the better for it.
Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel."
"Haggard is so enthusiastic about free-market economics that he applies it to church. New Life offers hundreds of small-group activities, everything from 'Growing in God as a Wife and Mother' to 'Holy Hip-Hop Jam Session.' How do the pastors decide what to include? They don't. If someone comes up with an idea, and that person passes a basic screening, the church will help promote the group. New Life organizes the marketplace but leaves the details to the people, who write their own programs."
"Prominently displayed are books by culture warriors like Pat Robertson and Phyllis Schlafly, but also books by public-policy experts, historians, and analysts of secular culture like Dinesh D'Souza, Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, Newt Gingrich, Thomas Friedman, and David Gergen. Yet we are in a church bookstore, where nearly all the titles are inspirational. Haggard is telling his congregation, Think big. Think about the whole world. The Bible does not tell you everything you need to know."
'When I became president of the NAE [National Association of Evangelicals],' Haggard tells the Inquirer's Nussbaum, 'the talk was about doing away with the term evangelical. Evangelicalism was morphing and changing so much that people were wondering if the term applied. The first decision I made as president was to start using the term prolifically and defining it simply. I define an evangelical as a person who believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that the Bible is the Word of God, and that you must be born again.'
"Christian churches, say the Emergents, need to look like Christian churches—down to the crosses, candles, and even (if necessary), the stained glass; and they need to teach like Christian churches—including a hearty dose of good 'vintage' doctrine.
So our Emergent friends would likely agree with both parties in this dispute: the church needs both to find new ways of translating the gospel to directly address the questions of the day (per Niebuhr), and to refuse to buckle to secular culture by knocking the sharp edges off of Jesus' radical kingdom message and pretending that 'we Christians are really just like the rest of you folks!' (per Hauerwas)."
"For almost ten years, I have participated in a book group comprising people who attended the University of Chicago. Mostly we read current novels, with a preference for those authors (Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, J. M. Coetzee) who have a connection with the school. The group includes a Marxist-leaning professor of philosophy, a childhood-development specialist, a pharmaceutical researcher, a neurologist, and an attorney.
I marvel in our meetings at how the same book can evoke radically different responses."
"We'll never know what Kyle Lake would have said about the reason why, when he reached for a microphone as he was performing a baptism in front of 800 people, he was fatally electrocuted. But his explanation of a verse that may be infuriating to hear right now to some of those he left behind—Romans 8:28—may at least hint at his answer. It is reprinted, with the publisher's permission, an excerpt from Understanding God's Will: How to Hack the Equation Without Formulas (Relevant, 2004)."
In what one Indonesian human rights activist describes as the latest attack in an ongoing terror campaign against Christians of Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, three teenage girls en route to school through a cocoa plantation were beheaded Saturday morning, apparently by Muslims.
Theresia Murangke, 14, and Ida Lambuaga and Alfina Yarni Sambue, both 15, were attacked one mile from Sayo village near the town of Poso, reports Indonesian Christian journalist Ibrahim Buaya, who formerly lived in this volatile region of Indonesia. A fourth girl, Noviana Malewa, 14, escaped from her attackers with machete wounds to her face. Buaya reported that she is in Poso General Hospital under heavy guard. The Associated Press reported that Noviana told police the six attackers wore black shirts.
Rather than becoming antagonists, Carson and McLaren should continue in dialogue, so the academic theologian and the missional practitioner might be mutually enriched and refocused.
The 100-Minute Bible is primarily intended for people who have an interest in Christianity but not the time (nor tenacity!) to read the whole Bible
These songs have been in the band for years. Some of them we wrote for the record, like 'God Will Lift Up Your Head' and 'Jesus, I Lift My Eyes.' Some of them we have been singing backstage in our dressing room or at church for years. But it's new to our audience. It's something we haven't really talked about. There was this sort of modern worship thing, and we felt like black sheep. But times came around and we felt like this is really valuable and could be something that the church even needs right now. Maybe the church needs some of these songs that take us back to our roots and foundation.
The debate over the meaning of the hurricane started when it became clear that federal, state, and local officials were having trouble responding to the disaster.
Democrats said the hurricane revealed inept leadership and bias against the poor. Republicans said government failures showed that the private sector could do a better job.
Muslim militants said it was Allah's judgment. Louis Farrakhan trumpeted a Black Muslim view that Katrina was judgment for the Iraq War. Ovadia Yosef, a leading Orthodox Jewish rabbi in Israel, said the hurricane was punishment for U.S. leaders forcing Israel out of the Gaza Strip.
The Emergents seem to me to have it right: No single program or rulebook can possibly speak to the hearts of this diversely gifted, diversely perceptive, and diversely wounded young generation who yearn for spiritual fulfillment yet deeply distrust 'organized religion.' We need to reassess—to find new models of creative ministries.
What to do in such a time?
This is a time for stories. Maybe stories from history, 'straight up'—carefully researched and narrated by the scholars who have given their lives to unearthing and interpreting historical evidence and shaping the clearest, most accurate and unbiased story they can out of the shards and shadows of the past. Maybe edifying allegories, plays, and tales of various kinds.
And maybe, too, the life stories of those 'dead Christians' who translated the Gospel for their own generations—forcing the church in their times to shake itself out of deep ruts and see the world in new, challenging lights. Maybe these lives can teach us something about how to translate the Gospel for the lost of our own new patchwork, post-Christian generation.
I was thoroughly depressed after Columbine, but I started to get encouraged when I read about how strong some of the young victims' faith was, particularly Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott. One thing I found interesting was that these kids loved films. Cassie's favorite movie was Braveheart, and I think Rachel's was as well. In contrast, the killers' favorite films were reportedly things like Natural Born Killers.
I decided I would like to find a way to make more great, inspiring films that can lift people up and encourage them, particularly for this age group. So I called my old roommate from college, Cary Granat, who at the time was president of Dimension Films. Cary also wanted to do something more inspirational for the family. So that was the origin of it, acknowledging that media really does have a role in influencing hearts and minds. And finding a way, rather than just to curse the darkness, to light a few candles and get more great films out there.
Now that winter had arrived on the Kansas prairie, the days were short and very cold. The wind howled and a hard rain fell. But there was no snow. Laura and Mary stayed inside, close by the fire. They listened to the wind and the wet sound of rain as they sewed on their quilts and cut paper dolls from scraps of wrapping paper.
If God has given you a dream, and chances are he has, it is imperative that you seek his will on how to make it a reality. Never lose focus on the truth that the dream is a blessing and a gift from Jesus. But in the end, don't you want to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant"? I want to hear Jesus say to me, "Matthew, you took my dream in you and made it what I wanted it to be; good job!"
If you get one thing from this book, let it be this: meditation on Jesus will change your spiritual life. It will rejuvenate your faith like nothing else you will ever experience. More than a great sermon, more than listening to a radio teaching, more than reading this book, meditation on Christ--what he did, who he is, and what he wants of you--will give your life focus, and it will make your faith provocative. And you will begin to know him like never before.
Mr. Bush's comments, while similar to remarks he made shortly after the disruption from Hurricane Katrina pushed gasoline prices sharply higher, were particularly notable because the administration has long emphasized new production over conservation. It has also opted not to impose higher mileage standards on automakers.
In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney said, 'Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it cannot be the basis of a sound energy policy.' Also that year, Ari Fleischer, then Mr. Bush's press secretary, responded to a question about reducing American energy consumption by saying 'that's a big no.'
'The president believes that it's an American way of life,' Mr. Fleischer said.
Religion may help teens find a sense of purpose, stay focused on schoolwork, avoid drugs, drive responsibly, and so on. These are good and important things and they are all part of the 'religious package,' but they are not the point. They are like the paper bag you get for free if you buy the groceries.
After a particularly difficult night, I shared my struggles with a young woman interested in becoming a youth minister. "I'm not sure you want to get into this," I said. "There are other things you could do." She sat in a moment of stunned silence. Then she told me about her college years.
"My faith was no match for college," she said. "Youth group was fun, but no one taught me anything." She recalled those years marked by drugs, broken relationships, an eating disorder, sex, pregnancy and eventually abortion. Finally, with tear-filled eyes, she said, "Don't you see? If I had grown up in a youth group like yours, I would have had a fighting chance."
'In most cases you’re dealing with the loss of someone close,' Grissom says. And whether or not it’s expected, the person is still going through a deep grieving process.
He says that when there’s a death, 'there’s an enormous amount of support around the funeral and maybe for a couple of weeks afterward, but then everyone around starts to resume their lives in a normal fashion; yet the person in grief is still trying to rebuild his or her life.'
Every day, nearly 40 million people visit one or more of 4.2 million porn sites the internet. At $6.2 billion yearly, porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, NBC, and CBS. According to statistics at XXXchurch.com, nearly 50 percent of Christians say that pornography is a major problem in the home.
The fallacy in this instance lies in the supposition that the meaning of a word in a specific context is much broader than the context itself allows and may bring with it the word's entire semantic range. Exegetical Fallacies, p. 60.Sheets' regularly brings to bear the word's entire semantic range even if the context does not allow this.
This fallacy occurs when a late use of a word is read back into earlier literature. At the simplest level, it occurs within the same language, as when the Greek early church fathers use a word in a manner not demonstrably envisaged by the New Testament writers...But the problem has a second face when we also add a change of language. Our word dynamite is etymologically derived from dynamis (power, or even miracle). I do not know how many times I have heard preachers offer some such rendering of Romans 1:16 as this: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the dynamite of God unto salvation for everyone who believes" -- often with a knowing tilt of the head, as if something profound or even esoteric has been uttered. This is not just the old root fallacy revisited. It is worse: it is an appeal to a kind of reverse etymology, the root fallacy compounded by anachronism. Did Paul think of dynamite when he penned this word? Exegetical Fallacies, pp. 33-34
On the other hand, we have weapons that are "divinely powerful" to pull down strongholds, if we would only realize it...The word "powerful" is dunatos and is actually one of the New Testament words for a miracle...And, of course, this is the Greek word from which we get the word dynamite. This stuff is explosive!
This dynamite is explosive for the "destruction of fortresses"...
But as important as word studies are, it is very doubtful if profound understanding of any text or of any theme is really possible by word studies alone.
Perhaps the principal reason why word studies constitute a particularly rich source for exegetical fallacies is that many preachers and Bible teachers know Greek only well enough to use concordances, or perhaps a little more. There is little feel for Greek as a language; and so there is a temptation to display what has been learned in study, which as often as not is a great deal of lexical information without the restraining influence of context. The solution, of course, is to learn more Greek, not less, and to gain at least a rudimentary knowledge of linguistics. Exegetical Fallacies, p. 64
A realistic and holistic solution for the victims of hurricane Katrina
Our Mission: To mobilize every community of 10,000 people within 1000 miles of the gulf coast to provide for the temporary resettlement of up to 10 families.
In the competitive world of stand-up comedians, Mr. Stine, 45, has found a niche as a conservative Christian, riffing on topics like gay marriage, judicial activism and judges who cite precedents from foreign courts. If this seems like an unlikely route to the "Tonight" show, it has its rewards. After years in secular comedy clubs, where he made up to $1,500 a week, he now performs at basketball arenas and football stadiums for gatherings of the Promise Keepers, a ministry aimed at men. For less than an hour onstage, he earns $20,000.
What sometimes goes on in all sorts of Christian institutions is not formation of people in the character of Christ; it's teaching of outward conformity. You don't get in trouble for not having the character of Christ, but you do if you don't obey the laws.
It is so important to understand that character formation is not behavior modification. Lots of people misunderstand it and put it in the category of Alcoholics Anonymous. But in spiritual formation, we're not talking about behavior modification.
The Saguaro Seminar issued the report Better Together, in December of 2000, calling for a nationwide campaign to redirect a downward spiral of civic apathy. Warning that the national stockpile of "social capital" --- our reserve of personal bonds and fellowship -- is seriously depleted, the report outlined the framework for sustained, broad-based social change to restore America's civic virtue.
I don't think about how we should do church. I love my church, and I love my pastor. But there's been a length of time where I did not feel like I fit in church culture in America. My theology is not run through the grid of self-help formulas. It's run through the grid of relational dynamics. There is a stark difference between the way the church in America is communicating faith and the way the Bible is communicating faith.
The way forward for Western and other imperfect Christians is the path of humility and brokenness. Of course, humility and brokenness don't sell very well from the pulpit, not to mention in our society. But that's irrelevant. What matters is that the Lord, in his sovereign ingenuity, wills to teach us trust and humble dependence by bringing us through hardship; trials represent the roundabout, yet only true way toward spiritual maturation. And the Lord includes among these hardships the spiritual turmoil suffered by forgiven sinners who become painfully aware they are far from the peak of holiness.
Are humility and honest confession characteristic of our churches? Not much of the time. Increasingly common is the self-assured, goal-oriented, achievement-driven, human-centered outlook. What would the evangelistic impact be if the popular profile of today's Christian emphasized sin and brokenness, if we just went public and admitted it: 'This is who we are, prone to wander, slow to learn, still in process, far from having 'arrived,' grateful for mercy ... so don't expect anything else.'
Sabbath, after all, is very counter-cultural. It's a godly way of challenging many false assumptions that govern our broader culture. As Dorothy Bass says, 'Sabbath-keeping forms habits of cultural resistance around pressure-points that are at the heart of our culture's distress: consumerism, time-famine, family fragmentation.' For Bass, 'decommericalizing the Sabbath is a key thing. I realized I needed to stop shopping on the Sabbath because shopping was one place where my own sin and the culture's need intersected. I was finding myself sitting in church thinking about getting a new piece of furniture rather than being properly attentive to God!'
In my opinion, the horror genre is a perfect genre for Christians to be involved with. I think the more compelling question is, Why do so many Christians find it odd that a Christian would be working in this genre? To me, this genre deals more overtly with the supernatural than any other genre, it tackles issues of good and evil more than any other genre, it distinguishes and articulates the essence of good and evil better than any other genre, and my feeling is that a lot of Christians are wary of this genre simply because it's unpleasant. The genre is not about making you feel good, it is about making you face your fears. And in my experience, that's something that a lot of Christians don't want to do.
To me, the horror genre is the genre of non-denial. It's about admitting that there is evil in the world, and recognizing that there is evil within us, and that we're not in control, and that the things that we are afraid of must be confronted in order for us to relinquish that fear. And I think that the horror genre serves a great purpose in bolstering our understanding of what is evil and therefore better defining what is good. And of course I'm talking about, really, the potential of the horror genre, because there are a lot of horror films that don't do these things. It is a genre that's full of exploitation, but the better films in the genre certainly accomplish, I think, very noble things.
'In my belief, God judged New Orleans for the sin of shedding innocent blood through abortion,' said Lefemine, who e-mailed the flesh-toned weather map to fellow activists across the country and put a stark message on the answering machine of his organization, Columbia Christians for Life.
Jesus had a very different approach to atrocities like the one we have experienced. When a multitude of Galileans were murdered by Pilate, Jesus asked a crowd, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” He answered, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did” (Luke 13:1–3). When a tower fell and killed eighteen people, Jesus asked, “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” And again he answered, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” (Luke 13:4–5). Jesus is saying that people should not try to discern the punishing hand of God in atrocities. They should rather concern themselves with their own relationship with the Father.
This attitude characterized all of Jesus’ ministries. He spent his ministry reaching out to people who were in different ways victims of a fallen, cursed world: the marginalized, the oppressed, the deaf, the mute, the blind, the deformed, the demonized. And Jesus never suggested that their affliction was punishment for sins they or someone else committed. Indeed, never once did Jesus suggest that their affliction in any way fit into a divine plan. On the contrary, Jesus assumed that their affliction was contrary to God’s will. Rather, Jesus expressed God’s will by coming against these afflictions. Indeed, often Jesus explicitly identified the ultimate source of their afflictions as being Satan or one of his demonic cohorts (e.g. Luke 11:14, 13:11–16; Mark 9:25; cf. Acts 10:38; 1 John 3:8).
We find further theological incentive for interreligious engagement through our belief that all people share a common humanity, that is, all are created imago dei, (Gen. 1:27) in God’s image and have been already profoundly reconciled to God and to others, including the creation, in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:18ff.; Colossians 3:15ff.). Every person embodies something of the divine image and therefore may possess some ray of truth, some aspect of the Mystery of God we know to be revealed in Jesus Christ. Even while we know God through Jesus Christ, we affirm that all human understanding of truth is inherently limited and conditioned. The reality of God, in contrast, is intrinsically unlimited. God will always be greater than any human can comprehend or any religion can convey. We affirm that it is morally, ethically, and spiritually wrong for any person, group, or religion to claim exclusive access to God, God’s love, grace, or salvation. When Christians and others have made such claims to exclusivity, much suffering and degradation has often been the result.
The results from these experiments are, obviously, quite disturbing. They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act -- and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment -- are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.
IT ISN’T the big questions that stop people going to church — it is the little irritations, research has suggested.
Most churchgoers who abandon their weekly worship do so because they have had a dispute with a fellow member of the congregation.
A disagreement on a range of issues, from the way the organ is played to the content of the sermon, was the reason that nearly three quarters of respondents to a survey gave for why they felt people had left the Church.
The best sermons don't describe emotions; they create them. That requires your imagination.
Jesus told stories—secular, worldly stories—that changed his listeners' angle of vision. They were not 'Bible stories' as we think of them. He didn't read them out of a book. He made them up on the spot. He created them out of life. He used his imagination. Some hearers followed him; others wanted to murder him. But they got his point. If the sermon is for our hearers, then we must serve the hearers as our Teacher did. We must use our imaginations and help them use theirs.
'How can you worship a homeless Man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?'
'Chinese Christians used to sacrifice everything for Christ. Now they only want God to bless them,' says one Chinese elder who has served five prison terms for planting churches."
'I made her leave for Ivan,' Ms. Burnett said of the storm last year that, it turned out, did not cause much damage here. 'She never forgave me.'
'She said, 'I'm not leaving, even if it's Category 10'; well, she's so damn stubborn,' Ms. Burnett said, beginning to cry.
Then Ms. Burnett saw a dog. 'Buddy, that's her dog,' she said. 'My mom's with the dog.'
The workers untangled a gently barking Buddy from some branches and then, when one spotted a body farther on, turned and signaled to another worker, who led Ms. Burnett off the roof and back to the rescue truck.
'Buddy, you're a miracle,' Ms. Burnett said to the dog, then turned to the worker, Debbie Crisher.
'She's in there, isn't she?'
'They're still looking,' Ms. Crisher said.
The search team turned over the body. It was that of Ms. Burnett's mother. They trudged back through power lines, trees and mud as heavy as wet concrete.
'Did you find her?' Ms. Burnett asked.
The squad leader, Jon Rigolo, took her aside and gave her the news. Ms. Burnett nodded and began crying again...
"The hardest part is, it didn't have to be this way," said David Cash, one of two doctors with the Virginia Beach team. "If people had evacuated - of course, where are they going to evacuate to? But other people did evacuate. Everybody that died here was needless. It's just the senselessness of it all."
Once inside the dome, refugees were told that for their own safety they could not leave - the flood waters climbed four feet up the walls outside - and many likened the shelter to a prison.
Michael Childs, 45 and a housepainter, went a step further.
"It's worse than a prison," said Mr. Childs, who knew something about the subject, having spent three months in the Orleans Parish Prison on a drunken-driving charge. "In prison you have a place to urinate, a place for other bathroom needs. Here you get no water, no toilets, no lights. You get all that in prison."
Seacoast is one of almost 1,000 U.S. churches to embrace a multisite approach, according to the Leadership Network (www.leadnet.org). Sometimes called a 'satellite' or 'franchise' model, going multisite is seen by advocates as one of the leading innovations of the 21st century and by critics as a sign that the church has sold out to consumerism—becoming just another big-box retailer, selling salvation with convenient hours and a discount price. The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between.
Roger Finke, a Penn State sociologist and coauthor of The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, sees a parallel between the multisite or franchise approach and the Methodist circuit riders of the 19th century.
"The Methodist circuit rider was basically the pastor for multiple satellite churches," Finke told CT. "They tried to start up satellite congregations as quickly and as cheaply as possible. When the circuit rider was not there during the week, the satellite had a class leader or layperson who kept things going. Then the circuit rider would come in every once in a while and fire people up."
'In the morning, as soon as you get out of bed, you are to make the sign of the holy cross and say: 'God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit watch over me. Amen.' Further directions follow: say the Apostles Creed, pray the Lord's Prayer. … Then 'you are to go to your work joyfully.'
The transition required a lot of deprogramming of old attitudes, and it produced a lot of pain. Some employees break down and cry in ROWE training sessions. 'People in the baby-boom generation realize what they gave up to get ahead in the workplace, and a lot of times it's their families. They realize that it doesn't have to be that way,' says Ressler, her eyes tearing up. In particular, men thank her and Thompson, who run the sessions, for giving them permission to spend more time with their families. 'They know now they can do it and not be judged,' says Thompson.
"A friend of mine, a young pastor who recently started a church, talks to me from time to time about the new face of church in America--about the postmodern church. He says the new church will be different from the old one, that we will be relevant to culture and the human struggle. I don't think any church has ever been relevant to culture, to the human struggle, unless it believed in Jesus and the power of His gospel. If the supposed new church believes in trendy music and cool Web pages, then it is not relevant to culture either. It is just another tool of Satan to get people to be passionate about nothing." (p. 111)
A few years ago I came across this fascinating observation by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville from his famous report of 1831, Democracy in America:
"Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith and religion, for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society."
These days, there is a new discussion building in our culture — in both public and private spaces — about the role of religion in American life. As we began to prepare this program on the religious roots in American democracy, I wanted to probe something de Tocqueville saw that I find underrepresented in our contemporary dynamics: a religious sensibility in the origins of our national ideals that goes deeper than our modern debates, and transcends them.
I found a modern de Tocqueville in philosopher Jacob Needleman, and our conversation felt like an adventure. Needleman spent several years tracing the spiritual and intellectual content of the American founders' thought. Spirit and intellect, he says, always worked in concert in the formulation of American democracy and the writing of the documents that define American identity even today. Rights implied duties. Happiness was an inalienable right, but it was not synonymous with pleasure, with having or acquiring what one wants. It meant "well-being." It was linked with conscience. In the "idea of America," Needleman asserts provocatively, democracy is not just a set of laws and societal structures. It is also inner work.
Needleman enlarges the notion of America's founders to include important thinkers who helped form the virtues of our republic beyond revolution and constitution. So in this week's program, alongside Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, we have wonderful readings from Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman. In the context of conversation with Needleman, I heard what each of them had to say with new interest and insight. I came away feeling that we can invoke the religious sensibility of the founders precisely as an antidote to the confusion and excesses of religion in American life today.
| This statement of faith belongs to: | |||
| Willow Creek Community Church - Bill Hybels | 3 | ||
| Cedar Ridge Community Church - Brian McLaren | 1 | ||
| Saddleback Church - Rick Warren | 2 | ||
| Lakewood Church - Joel Olsteen | 2 | ||
| Thomas Road Baptist Church - Jerry Falwell | 3 | ||
| New Life Church - Ted Haggard | 0 | ||
| The Potter's House - T.D. Jakes | 2 | ||
| This Poll by hawkenstein | |||
| Click here to view current results | |||
...it intrigued me to hear the new version of Dahl's book would be directed by Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp, two guys with a bit of a resumé in creepy, trippy, and weird. And so, I viewed Burton and Depp as the two biggest wild cards in whether this movie would be any good.
It turns out that the duo has each succeeded in creating a fable that is not creepy or trippy, but just possessing a gentle weirdness (just wait for the scene with the 'Small World' attraction) that is completely appropriate to Dahl's original book. In fact, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a charming, engrossing, and often laugh-out-loud funny fairy tale that captures the book's spirit while still marking its own territory.
Philip Jenkins, in his groundbreaking The Next Christendom, wrote that a 'global perspective should make us think carefully before asserting 'what Christians believe' or 'how the church is changing.' All too often [such statements] refer only to what that ever-shrinking remnant of Western Christians and Catholics believe. Such assertions are outrageous today. … The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.'
In the Anglican Communion, the third-largest Christian body in the world with more than 70 million adherents, there is no better representative of that shift than Nigerian Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola.
