By Sophia Agtarap When church was just a habit without meaning, Matt Hooper walked away. Which meant he would have to fall in love all over again. Church means different things to different people. For some, it’s a community of people who gather on a Sunday morning. For others, it’s an irrelevant place. For Matt Hooper, it’s been a little of both. Matt is one of those guys who was raised in The United Methodist Church. The son of a... Read more
Starting today, I’ll be at a conference at Pomona College called Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization, which will draw about 1,500 participants from around the world, including many from China. I got involved in it because, for my whole career as a pastor, I’ve been much influenced by the core subject matter of this event: the work of Alfred North Whitehead and the scholars such as Charles Hartshorne and John Cobb who followed him in what is known as “process... Read more
“Pilgrim: Someone who makes an intentional journey courting holy disruption.” — Christine Valters Paintner One of my very favorite writers on the spiritual life is Christine Valters Paintner, an author, Benedictine Oblate, and Abbess of the online retreat center Abbey of the Arts. When one of her emails graces my inbox, I notice my pulse slowing, and I take a deep inhale and exhale. For I know reading one of her essays inviting me to once again slow down, pay attention to my senses and... Read more
By Justino Valdez “I don’t believe millennials are hostile toward Christianity. I believe they just don’t quite understand it well enough.” Recently, the Pew Research Center released a study titled “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.” The study reported that America is changing — or more accurately, leaving — religious ways and organization. And while Christianity remains dominant as America’s leading faith with 70.6% of the 35,000 persons surveyed claiming themselves to be Christian, it is down nearly eight percentage points from previous identical studies... Read more
The late Marvin Gaye was my first proper crush. His chocolate buttery voice courted me. Like molasses, his lyrics seeped into my heart, mind, and soul. The “[p]leasant words” of his love songs to God were, and still are, “like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body” (Proverbs 16:24*). When my ten-year-old self listened to “God is Love” from Gaye’s 1971 album What’s Going On, I tasted, but could not fully savor, his sweet, soulful ode to... Read more
The end of a school year brings with it the whole gambit of emotions as those of us in youth ministry take the opportunity to reflect upon the journey of the past several months. It is in this time of reflection that we revisit the “highs” and “lows” of the year, give thanks for students who have come into our ministries for the first time, lament those who, for one reason or another, have drifted away, and load up on... Read more
For my fifth Pando Populus post, I’ve asked my good friend Michael Dowd to briefly highlight some of the ideas he will discuss during his 2p.m. Friday June 5 presentation on “The Sacred Side of Science: Evidence as Modern-Day Scripture, Ecology as Theology,” at the “Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization” conference (Section 4, Track 3). – Philip Clayton When Religion Fails, Economics Becomes Demonic By Michael Dowd Carbon pollution is undeniably the material cause of Earth’s climate breakdown,... Read more
As a kid I had a single bookshelf in my bedroom that served a two-fold purpose; the bottom shelves held books, while the top shelves housed a wide assortment of cheap, “golden” (yellow plastic) trophies. By the time I finished playing sports, there were easily fifteen or twenty trophies lining those shelves. The thing is though, aside from an “MVP” award in a roller hockey tournament in 6th grade and a Junior Varsity Conference tennis title, I never actually won anything.... Read more
1. You can join the ever-so-awesome Brian McLaren and Tripp Fuller in Section VI, Track 8, “A New WAY for a New Day,” as they explore options for people who care about faith but are alienated from traditional institutions and doctrines. Tripp Fuller, self-described theo-nerd, is co-host of the famous Homebrewed Christianity podcasts. Brian McLaren is the renowned and beloved author, activist, and emerging church pioneer who brought us “A Generous Orthodoxy,” “Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed... Read more
If you measure per person, Canada and the United States have long had the dubious distinction of leading the world in per capita climate-change-causing emissions. If you measure by country, however, China surpassed America as the world’s leading contributor to global warming in 2006.[i] By 2011, it was producing 10.6 billion metric tons of CO2e, which, along with the 6.6 billion produced by the U.S., made up more than half of the world’s global greenhouse emissions.[ii] The result: extensive smog... Read more
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