Father Matt McGinness had never heard the song playing on his car radio, even though “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” was one of superstar Amy Grant’s biggest hits. “Gosh, I really like that song,” the priest told a musician friend that night back in 1995. “Well, thanks,” responded Rich Mullins. This mystified the priest, who asked what he meant. “I wrote that,” said Mullins. McGinness hadn’t realized that Mullins was that famous. The priest simply knew him as another... Read more

It was easy to hear Wilfred Kwadwo Sewodie’s voice each night as he moved through the quiet Dallas Theological Seminary hallways, scrubbing baseboards, collecting trash and doing his janitorial duties. Sometimes he would dissect New Testament passages in Greek or meditate out loud on big questions inspired by his studies. Faculty members working late learned that, when they heard his voice, they could expect a visitor seeking answers. But most of the time the African simply sang hymns with a... Read more

The advertisement featured a photo of Stonehenge, with dawn’s rays summoning worshippers to embrace old mysteries. Who was invited? “Reformed Druids, Born-again Celts, Pentecostal Pagans, Recovering Christians, Christians seeking comfort from the storms of church bureaucracies and politics, lapsed Christians, committed Christians whose commitment is beginning to wane, Spiritual Desperados, folks looking for solace, seekers, rebels, rakes, the luckless, the abandoned, the forsaken, the vague and the clueless. Dress comfortably….” It wasn’t an off-the-rack church ad, admitted the Rev. Canon... Read more

Back in the 1980s, I began to experience deja vu while covering event after event on the religion beat in Charlotte, Denver and then at the national level. I kept seeing a fascinating cast of characters at events centering on faith, politics and morality. A pro-life rally, for example, would feature a Baptist, a Catholic priest, an Orthodox rabbi and a cluster of conservative Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Lutherans. Then, the pro-choice counter-rally would feature a “moderate” Baptist, a Catholic... Read more

As President Bill Clinton recently discovered, there is no more complex and emotional issue in Christendom than Communion. This issue is even more divisive than church issues linked to sexuality, which always grab headlines. The reality is that today’s doctrinal earthquakes about sex are only important to the degree that they crack the rock on which altars stand. Churches argue about sex. Churches split over issues linked to Communion. Cardinal John O’Connor of New York urged his listeners to see... Read more

For generations, Southern Baptists used a simply strategy to control any truly dangerous outbreaks of controversy. No matter how bad things got at the Southern Baptist Convention, a respected patriarch or matriarch could always go to a microphone and propose a surge of prayer, church planting, foreign missions or evangelism. The motion would pass quickly, hot issues would vanish into a committee and everyone would hug and pose for photographs. Insiders referred to these as “We love God” resolutions. Who... Read more

Soon after “Titanic” opened in the United States, director James Cameron ventured into cyberspace to field questions from waves of stricken fans. One mother described how her young daughter sat spellbound through the three-hour-plus romance between a first-class girl trapped in a loveless engagement with a cruel fiance and a starving artist who liberates her, then surrenders his life to save her in the icy North Atlantic. As they left the theater, the mother said her daughter noticed older girls... Read more

There is nothing unusual about a man with a name like Geoffrey O’Riada serving as a priest in Belfast. But this particular clergyman will cause raised eyebrows next year when he returns to the land of his ancestors to start a mission. For Geoffrey O’Riada is a very unusual name for an Eastern Orthodox shepherd and Belfast is an unusual place to gather an Eastern Orthodox flock. O’Riada is convinced his mission makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens... Read more

It happened every year in the weeks just before St. Patrick’s Day. “Without fail, publishers would start putting out the same drivel. You’d see books of Irish blessings and Irish stories and Irish saints and Irish whatever and all of it would be green. Everything would be green — the covers, the printing, everything,” said Catholic writer Thomas Cahill, author of the 1995 bestseller, “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” In a strange way, it’s getting harder to spot this annual... Read more

Most movies about the South look like they were filmed in Southern California. What’s missing is heat, sweat, rust, bugs, mud and another messy reality called “sin.” These movies contain sinful behavior, but nobody calls it “sin” or says folks should do anything about it. This is strange, since the real South contains zones in which people still wear Sunday clothes, carry ragged Bibles and say prayers before meals in restaurants. “Most folks in New York and out here in... Read more