Now featured in the Patheos Book Club: How to Survive Life (And Death): A Guide for Happiness in This World and Beyond by Robert Kopecky. You claimed to have had three Near Death Experiences; were they different from each other? Kopecky: Yes, each was entirely different from the other, but all similar to other peoples’ NDE stories that I’ve read or heard since. The first was an entirely engrossing experience that went on for what seemed like a long time. The second... Read more
Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity, by popular Catholic author Ronald Rolheiser, is currently featured at the Patheos Book Club. We invited Fr. Rolheiser to share some thoughts about the new book – and the meaning of Christian discipleship – here. Sacred Fire is the sequel to your best-selling contemporary classic, The Holy Longing, which was published 15 years ago. Did you always intend to write a sequel? Why now? Yes, I always intended a... Read more
Hope comes in a lot of flavors and colors and it doesn’t matter whether we’re religious/spiritual or not. Hope is whatever drags us from one day into the next one. When we stop having reasons that make us do that, life gets bleak pretty quickly. Even more, when our “hope” doesn’t have enough elastic in it to stretch beyond our last breath, our lives make a nasty “splat” which nobody may hear but hurts nonetheless. I recently performed a funeral... Read more
By Anna Quinn Our culture constantly pressures us to remain busy and engaged. Especially in the age of the iPhone and the Internet, it bombards us with projects, activities, to-do lists, urgent text, and entertainment. Even within the church, we generally feel pressure to perform. Although there is a perfunctory emphasis on having a “Quiet Time,” most of us focus on outward works. Do you take meals to the sick? Do you teach Sunday school? Have you been on a... Read more
By Beth Davies-Stofka Is social media a means of grace? It can be. Is the Spirit in the network, mediating divine grace in places like Facebook and Second Life? According to Clint Schnekloth, the Trinity is already working in and through our social media. In Mediating Faith (Fortress Press, $29.00), Schnekloth argues that “social media offers imaginative space to consider how faith might be lived and formed in nonhierarchical yet highly connected ways.” Digitally-mediated environments, Schnekloth says, are a mission field,... Read more
“Heaven became intensely personal to my wife, Sarah, and me in August 2009 when a one-person car accident sent our son, Josiah, to heaven. I’m a pastor, so heaven wasn’t a new concept or something I hadn’t thought about previously. But, as anyone would expect, this one moment in time forever changed us.” — Pastor Steve Berger, author, Between Heaven and Earth This month at the Patheos Book Club, we’re featuring a new book by Steve Berger called Between Heaven and... Read more
“I feel like it is time for those of us with a passion for mediating realities like bookishness and gaming to engage what that means for the life of faith. I wanted to write a book that brought together science fiction and faith formation, role-playing and the catechumenate.” — Clint Schnekloth, author, Mediating Faith Popular Lutheran blogger and pastor Clint Schnekloth has a timely new book out this month called Mediating Faith: Faith Formation in a Trans-Media Era. The book... Read more
Jesus Feminist is exciting and new not primarily for its take on feminism, but for Bessey’s powerful, cutting, and deeply biblical vision of a world where any calling from God for any person at any place is possible and should be allowed free reign. Read more
“When else in the world would anybody have cared about what some happy clappy mum from western Canada thinks about the church and faith and scripture and theology? Uh, never, absolutely never.” That’s author and blogger Sarah Bessey, responding to my comment about the rise in popularity of a growing number of young women authors, such as herself, in the Christian media landscape of late. A rise, she imagines as we talk further, that’s due in part to our being... Read more
By Timothy Muldoon I teach in a senior Capstone program at Boston College, a place that annually sends many graduates to volunteer programs around the country and around the world. Happily, I now have a book to recommend to them as they navigate the transition from college to the working world, even as they retain the desire to serve and find ways to cultivate spiritual growth. Kerry Weber, an editor at the Jesuit weekly magazine America, has written an engaging... Read more
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