An interesting and engaging piece in the StarTribune today about a small Lutheran church in northern Minnesota that almost welcomed a gay pastor: My hometown church, with a little more than a hundred members, recently voted on whether to call a new pastor. It has been without a permanent pastor for almost three years, during which the call committee has been working to fill the position. As with most small-town churches, the budget is tiny. This one allows only for... Read more
According to Philip Jenkins, about the same time that country music became cool: In August 1968, the Byrds released the album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which pioneered a new style of country rock. It also initiated a revolutionary change in the country music world, which was at the time very conservative musically and politically, and where long hair was strictly taboo. (Merle Haggard’s Okie From Muskogee became a huge hit the following year, and a confrontational conservative anthem). At first,... Read more
At Splice Today, Noah Berlatsky says that progressives like me who mock creationists are actually making a mountain of a molehill: For what it’s worth, I think evolution is true; I believe in it as much as I believe in the Internet or in the existence of Katha Pollitt. I did my MA thesis in part on Darwin, and I’ve read a good deal of evolutionary theory for a layperson. I agree with Pollitt that creationism is incoherent and illogical.... Read more
Yesterday, at their General Assembly, the PC(USA) followed the United Methodists and rejected a proposal to change the definition of marriage in their official book. According to the responses I got on Twitter, some see it at the last stand of older and more conservative Presbyterians, while others think it was a last ditch effort to keep large, white, conservative congregations from leaving for the new ECO denomination. It seems that the oldy-but-goody pedophilia argument came up. By Associated Press,... Read more
What, did you think I got an audience with POTUS?!? Read more
It’s summertime, which means it’s the time for denominations to have their annual clusterf meetings. The United Methodists already had theirs. At the 11th hour, a deal for new governance, allowing increased participation in denominational affairs for younger clergy, unraveled. They also reaffirmed their stance against gay clergy and gay marriage. The Presbyterians are currently meeting (for 8 days — seriously, 8 days?!? — over the 4th of July(!)). They don’t seem to want young delegates, and the vice moderator... Read more
I’m in Washington, D.C., with the family for a week of vacation (and some work) (and a great big and ravenous dog is watching our house!). Last night, after hours a Smithsonian museums, we sat with tens of thousands of Americans and watched Tom Bergeron host “A Capitol Fourth,” culminating with an amazing fireworks show over the Washington Monument. Here’s what both Courtney and I remarked on during the show: The large number of immigrant families around us on the... Read more
The as-usual hamfisted Focus on the Family seems to think so. In a blog post that was subsequently scrubbed from their website after backlash (seriously, who could have seen that coming?), Chad Hills wrote: Questions begin to fester in our heads: So many fires have started in such close, uncanny sequence in Colorado, with Waldo Canyon being more recent … Would any sane person intentionally start a series of fires (arson) that would destroy other people’s lives? Could someone be... Read more
David Lose, professor at Luther Seminary, author of Making Sense of Scripture: Big Questions About the Book of Faith, and the brains behind WorkingPreacher.org list five reasons that denominations are a big fat waste of time and money. Here’s #3. Click through below to see the rest. 3) Inordinate amounts of funding are spent on maintaining denominational structures and bureaucracies, money that could be spent on mission. Even though every denomination I know has in recent years cut way back... Read more
Luckily, the NewsChannel 4 Reporter shakes a tambourine in the story, just in case you forgot what it sounds like: Read more
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