The Tony Jones Blog at Patheos
This week, The 40 Day Journey, a Lenten video blog by Patheos, will feature a video by me each day. They were filmed in the north woods of Minnesota, and they’re each about 90 seconds long. The first one is below. I hope you’ll visit The 40 Day Journey each day this week to see the rest.
In part two of my interview with Lauren Winner about her book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis,, we talk about faith, agnosticism, prayer, and why Lauren pursued became an Episcopal priest.
In part one of my interview with Lauren Winner about her book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, we talk about writing, regrets, divorce, and what a memoir really is.
Part two coming tomorrow.
In the most over-hyped video of our young year, spoken word poet, Jefferson Bethke, tells us all how much better Jesus is than religion. Same song, new verse.
It’s cool to be pissed at “religion” when you’re 20. I get it (though I can’t say I ever went through this phase). And then, as you age, you realize something: Religion is simply the social and psychological framework by which human beings organize their experience of the Divine.
That is, most human beings experience the Divine Presence — what Schleiermacher called the “feeling of utter dependence.” It’s one of the few things beyond biology that unites people across cultures and through the ages.
It’s naïve to think that billions of people will experience the Divine, but they won’t try to organize and categorize that experience. We do, and we find that our experience overlaps with the experience of others. We join with those others, and we find patterns of speech, symbols, and behavior that help us articulate our experiences.
And it’s not bad that we do this. It is, Mr. Bethke, inevitable.
Stephen Colbert, who happens to be the person I’d choose to spend an eternity on a deserted island with (other than Courtney and kids), has contributed to the It Gets Better Project:
Here’s my interview yesterday with Rob Bell on Doug Pagitt Radio. I’ll post the rest of the show throughout this week, with my thoughts. But for now, here’s this. And, if you’re in the Twin Cities, maybe I’ll see you at Rob’s appearance tonight at Wayzata Community Church.
I’ve put the Trucker Frank videos from my YouTube channel into a playlist, so now you can watch them all in order!
Last week I blogged about a gay teenager in Minnesota who committed suicide in July. Sadly, he is not alone in teenagers who are figuring out their sexuality, lose all hope at being understood, and kill themselves. Now Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist that Christians won’t admit to reading, has started a project called “It Gets Better,” in which he is soliciting videos from GLBT persons who have survived the gauntlet of middle school and high school. Here’s an example:
My question: How will the Christian church rally to save the lives of GLBT teens?
…but this is what they’re getting for Christmas!
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