Part 6 of series: What is a Church? When a Church is Not a Church, Part 1 When I was young, I learned the little rhyme that goes like this: Here is the church, Here is the steeple, Open the doors, See all the people. Of course it didn’t dawn on me at the time that I was getting deficient theology. Only later in life did I realize that I should have learned a better rhyme: Here is a building,... Read more
Today’s New York Times has bad news for the government. Trust in government is at an all-time low: With Election Day just over a year away, a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with Americans’ distrust of government at its highest level ever. The Times article goes on to try and explain these findings and to draw out implications for the upcoming elections.... Read more
Part 5 of series: What is a Church? Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 3 In my last two posts I began exploring various sources from which people get their ideas of what a church should be. These included: 1. Past experience of church 2. Pop culture 3. The news 4. A projection of their personal needs and preferences Today I want to explore one other source, a source that has a powerful influence on the way... Read more
A recent article in the New York Times highlighted people who are proudly unreasonable. No, not the Tea Partiers or the Wall Street Occupiers. These unreasonable folk are “entrepreneurs who want to change the world.” Why call them unreasonable? Because they are participants in the Unreasonable Institute of Boulder, Colorado. Co-founded by Daniel Epstein, this six-week summer institute is “for entrepreneurs who want to solve social problems and make some money, too.” As Hannah Seligson explains in her Times article,... Read more
Are You Satisfied? Really? Psalm 90:1-17 Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Psalm 90:14 If you’re like the average American, you are less satisfied today than you were a few years ago. In a Gallup poll taken earlier this year, people were less satisfied than they were three years ago concerning “the opportunity for a person to get ahead by working hard, our system of government,... Read more
James C. McKinley, Jr. recently wrote a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times. In “At the Protests, the Message Lacks a Melody,” McKinley contrasts the current Occupy Wall Street protests with their ancestors. His article begins: “Every successful movement has a soundtrack,” the songwriter Tom Morello told reporters after he had tried to fire up the crowd at the Occupy Wall Street Protest last week with a Woody Guthrie tune and one of his own labor songs. Perhaps he... Read more
Bradley L. Moore is a Senior Vice President in a large, multinational corporation. He is also a fine writer whose work has been published in a variety of media, including The Chicago Sun Times and Christianity Today. Bradley is an editor and featured writer for The High Calling, a website devoted to Everyday Conversations About Work, Life, and God. Recently, Bradley wrote a thoughtful piece called “Permission to Wake Up Your Soul.” He talked about how his artistic explorations at... Read more
A fascinating, challenging op-ed piece in the New York Times. Here’s how the authors, Robert P. George and Melissa Moschella, both of Princeton University, begin: IMAGINE you have a 10- or 11-year-old child, just entering a public middle school. How would you feel if, as part of a class ostensibly about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, he and his classmates were given “risk cards” that graphically named a variety of solitary and mutual sex acts? Or if, in another... Read more
Part 4 of series: What is a Church? Where Do People Get Their Ideas of Church? Part 2 Yesterday I began considering the sources of people’s ideas about church. To review, here are my first two points: 1. People get their ideas of church from their past experience of church. 2. People get their ideas of church from pop culture. 3. People get their ideas of church from the news. Much of the time, what people get from the news... Read more
Mark D. Roberts
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Faith, Politics, and Mini Cupcakes
What do faith, politics, and mini cupcakes have in common? Not much, except that they have recently been featured in newspaper columns. Five Rules for Faith and Politics Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Rev. Oliver Thomas, a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors suggest five rules for faith and politics in a recent edition of USA Today. In summary, here are their suggested rules: 1. It is never appropriate — explicitly... Read more