When young teenagers are driven to kill themselves, the bullies are not the only one's at fault, we are too. And when they kill themselves, they are killing a piece of humanity. When we allow the death of innocent teenagers to take place, we support the very perversion we say we're against. We perpetuate the reverse perversion of the Big Other. We can't idylly sit by and talk about loving our neighbour any longer. Read more
"The truth behind the movie "The Social Network" is that we are social beings and that we crave networks, be they digital or real." Read Pop Theology blogger Ryan Parker's review of this fall's smash hit about the creator of Facebook. Read more
"I believe that God intervenes in our world at times, but I remain convinced that it is our mission to partner our works with the faith we exhibit during prayer." Read this, and other responses from different faith traditions, on the efficacy of prayer from our new What Do I Really Believe Series? Read more
To help us better understand what has happened to prayer, I think we have to listen in to a psychoanalyst by the name of Jacques Lacan. When a child is in its predominant learning stage it looks to the mother as the sole nurturer of its reality. The role of the mother cannot be underscored here. The child believes that the mother is pulled away by outside desires, because this is an unknown element, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan refers to this imaginary object as the Phallus. Which itself is an imaginary object. Read more
A friend of mine who is a pastor in Dallas was once teaching Sunday School with a group of children. They were reading this story of the ten lepers. “What do you think about this story?” she asked after she had read it to them. One little girl answered, “Jesus must have been so happy that somebody thanked him!” Read more
"The surprise in the recent Pew Survey isn't how little people know about their own religion and the religions of others around them, but that they know anything at all." Professor Robert Hunt considers the implications of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey results. Read more
"The charges against Long are less about homosexuality, the defensiveness of his congregation, the theology he espouses, or the age and gender of the accusers. The case is about the possible abuse of clerical power." Professor Monica Coleman on this critical opportunity to raise all of our consciousnesses about clergy sexual misconduct. Read more
"Being a pastor is a weird job. I love the freedom to read, plan worship, talk with interesting people, and sit with scripture and the tradition. But sometimes I just have to laugh at myself and at any expectation I have or someone else might have that I can come up with a spiritual word or reflection." Emerging church pastor Courtney Pinkerton on a day in the life... Read more
On September 22, Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old college freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, jumped from the George Washington Brudge in what the New York Times is calling an “apparent suicide.” Clementi’s 18-year-old roommate and another 18-year-old classmate have been charged with illegally taping and broadcasting video of Clementi in an intimate encounter with another man. Clementi was a promising young violinist, and for the perpetrators of this hate crime, “The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.” Three... Read more
Not so many people. Why? In part, apparently, because we are doing an increasingly poor job of explaining to the people who come through the doors what it is that we believe, why it makes a difference, and how it differs from what others believe. Episcopal Priest Fred Schmidt reflects on a recent Pew Research Center report on U.S. Religious Knowledge... Read more
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