Maundy Thursday is the day the church remembers the Last Supper and Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet. Anglican "blogger" Barbara Gauthier posted this ancient hymn on her daily newsletter:

What could be stranger than this?
What more awesome?

He who is clothed with light as with a garment (Ps. 104:2)
is girded with a towel.

He who binds up the waters in His clouds (Job 26:8),
who sealed the abyss by His fearful Name,
is bound with a girdle.

He who gathers together
the waters of the sea as in a vessel (Ps. 33:7)
now pours water in to a basin.

He who covers the tops of the heavens with water (Ps. 104:3)
washes in water the feet of His disciples.

He who has weighed the heavens with His palm
and the earth with three fingers (Is. 40:12)
now wipes with undefiled palms
the soles of His servants’ feet.

He before whom every knee should bow,
of those that are in heaven,
on earth and under the earth (Phil.2:10)
now kneels before His servants.

Cyril of Alexandria (375-444)

Posted by Mark Galli at April 9, 2009 | Comments (1)

Today is Ash Wednesday, marking for Western Christians the beginning of Lent, one of the oldest observances in the Christian calendar. Evoking Jesus' 40 days of temptation in the desert, the period that leads into Easter has traditionally been observed by fasting, prayer, and abstaining from certain habits in order to make room for God. While more traditional fasts include giving up meat and alcohol, nontraditional fasting trends have cropped up in the media this week.

The Wall Street Journal last Friday had an interesting story on parents giving up Facebook for Lent, including a 39-year-old dad in Philadelphia who described the social-networking site as "my candy," and a mom who confessed that her Facebook addiction kept her from playing with her children. (She joined an online quitting-Facebook support group to help - of course.) Responding to the WSJ article, Lindsey Turrentine at CNET News posted 5 tips on how to "quit Facebook cold turkey," Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune posted 10 humorous rules for "fighting the urge," and E. E. Evans at GetReligion aptly noted that the WSJ article failed to provide historical context for understanding Lent beyond a personal-improvement rationale.

In the U.K., evangelical aid agency Tearfund is partnering with Church of England leaders and Energy and Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband MP to kick off its second annual carbon fast. Tearfund vice president, the Rev. James Jones, told The Guardian he is putting a solar hot water system in his home and turning off electronics when not in use. Tearfund is using its RSS feed and Facebook to provide daily tips on how to save energy. According to Anglican Communion News Service, individual churches are passing out low-energy light bulbs and installing energy-efficient heating. Yet not everyone thinks Tearfund's initiative a worthy one: Sociologist Frank Furedi, writing for The Australian, calls it "a semi-conscious attempt to transform environmentalism into a caricature of a religion."

The Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch all asked online readers to share what they are giving up for Lent. Responses ranged from thoughtful to silly to blasphemous. On a more serious note, leading religion writer Cathleen Falsani wrote on her blog about looking for "burning-bush moments" during Lent, and finding one involving a Malawian boy needing life-saving heart surgery. Popular Christian blogger Anne Jackson writes in her last post until April 13, the day after Easter, that she will also be off Facebook and Twitter during Lent. And, perhaps most exciting for the editors here at Christianity Today, international editor Susan Wunderink kicks off the CT Image blog, Imago Fidei, with photographs and Scripture verses with strong Lenten themes.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at February 25, 2009 | Comments (1)

Old news is not interesting. Unless it keeps repeating itself. And then, like a defective CD that keeps sticking at the same place, it's time to do something.

An article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune announces:

Here's the steeple; open the door, and where are the young people?
A survey finds that many youths draw a line between being spiritual and participating in an organized religion.

The story is based on the release of a survey conducted by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute, in which nearly 7,000 people were queried about their attitudes towards religion and spirituality.

"Spirituality is bigger than religion," said Peter Benson a co-directors of the Institute's Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence. "One of the things we have to focus on now is disentangling spiritual development from religious development."

And this Colorado Springs, in a story about a new congregation called Amplify Church:

The church also ignores traditional Christian rites and rituals in favor of an ultracasual atmosphere. It's just young adults with Bibles, hanging out to rap about their faith.

"Churches have become corporations," [The Rev. Dan] MacFadyen said. "We are trying to take away the corporate baggage and be real."

Being real apparently amounts to meeting in a bar, sitting "at bar tables in near darkness while blinking lights bathed the musicians in bright hues," "where Miller Lite and Budweiser posters, not crosses, hang on the walls," and where the pastor is "forgoing suit and tie in favor of worn jeans, sandals and T-shirt."

Again, not much new or creative here, and yet it speaks to an ongoing distrust among many people (and not just youth) of the church. Then again, we know from other stories, there is a counter-movement towards traditional churches with rich and even complex liturgies.

Actually both movements--away from mere religion and toward liturgy--may be driven by the same thing, something the Minneapolis survey tries to quantify: "The good news for faith communities is that 93 percent of the young people surveyed believe there is a spiritual aspect to life."

Despite rumors to the contrary, we don't live in a secular age. People remain hungry to know God. To me it is silliness to abandon the rich history and tradition of the church. At the same time, it is foolishness for churches to carp at the shallowness of so much spiritual searching.

Posted by Mark Galli at November 11, 2008 | Comments (9)

Everyone who either grew up as an evangelical Christian or dated one has heard or spoken this line: "It's not you. I just want to spend more time with God."

I always thought this line was a crock, not because wanting to spend more time with God wasn't admirable, but because it was typically used as a cop-out, a way to ease the discomfort of ruining someone's junior year of high school.

(See, I have this friend, and he had this girlfriend ...)

I think we can agree that few relationships, especially those where both members were Christians, end because one person's quest for godliness is inhibited by the other's indifference. But this story from the Christian Post presents a more difficult issue: What to do when the guy in your Christian band stops believing in Jesus?

Christian metalcore band Haste the Day has asked guitarist Jason Barnes to step down after months of spiritual searching by their close friend concluded with his loss of faith in God.

"This is going to come as a shock to many of you," the group wrote to fans in their official MySpace page Friday. "After much prayer and thought given to the matter, we asked Jason Barnes to step down from his involvement with Haste the Day."

In their statement, the seven-year-old band from Indianapolis explained that Barnes had been "searching and searching for real meaning in his existence."

"After several months of reading literature and talking with friends, Jason had determined that he felt there was no God and certainly no Jesus," the group revealed.

"We as a band do not have problem with those that do not believe in Jesus, nor do we cast judgement (sic) on those that do not believe in Jesus," the band continued. "We just want to love on people like Jesus would and hopefully share a little bit about what he's done and doing in our lives."

After you get over the lameness of the band's name, which sounds like a rip-off of Saves the Day, you realize this situation doesn't have a simple solution. From an evangelical perspective, the band members had to weigh whether Barnes was more likely to return to God if he remained in the band or was removed from it. (In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul tells the church of Corinth to expel an immoral brother for his own good, though the reason is for sinful behavior, not lack of belief.) Then, from a music-making perspective, the band needed to decide whether Haste the Day could stand for the same things with a non-Christian in the band.

Churches deal with the same question when they assemble their worship band, an often-rotating group of musicians selected by a worship leader. I have heard complaints before about non-Christians performing during a Sunday service, and I've known worship leaders who have stepped down without solicitation because they didn't feel their lives were congruent with their words of praise.

I can't think of any parallels from the world of Christian punk culture I matriculated through, but I do remember when Pedro the Lion lost his way.

David Bazan, the frontman and every-position musician behind Pedro, had written poetic albums about God's role in curing the human condition, which album written like a book, with plot and theme and characters and beautiful language. But then I bought "Control," and I noticed Bazan's message was changing. The album, which I believe was about the struggle to fight the ways of the flesh, particularly materialism and infidelity, was among the most depressing I owned. The next album, "Achilles Heel," was much more upbeat, but had some shockers like this line from "Foregone Conclusions":

You were too busy steering the conversation toward the lord
To hear the voice of the spirit begging you to shut the f--k up

"'Foregone Conclusions' has to be the sweetest piece of music and melody Bazan has ever produced even though the lyrics are as bitter and cynical as ever," this art and religion blogger wrote. "Ignore the content of the lyrics and you almost have a feel-good summer hit. I guess that's one of the things that makes the man compelling. Paradox is his bread and butter ? cussing with Christianity; sweet melodies with bitter words."

But by last summer, it became clear that Bazan's bitter words had found a soft spot. He'd lost his faith. "I just find myself on the other side of this line that I wasn't on before," Bazan told the Daily Iowan.

The thing is: His music still shakes my soul. It is beautiful and bitter, obsessed with pain and sadness and joy and doubt and all the other things that make life so wonderful. And his early albums still share the redemptive message found on "Whole."

So -- back to Haste the Day -- what to do when a band member loses their religion?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at July 23, 2008 | Comments (33)

Andrew Sullivan has written an unusually honest and reflective column for The Guardian on the intellectual tradeoffs of living in a one-click-away world.

A veteran of the blogosphere now publishing at a rate of 300 posts per week, Sullivan rhapsodizes over the transformations this has worked on his brain functioning:

I process information far more rapidly and seem able to absorb multiple sources of information simultaneously in ways that would have shocked my teenage self. In researching a topic, or just browsing through the blogosphere, the mind leaps and jumps and vaults from one source to another.

Leaping and vaulting at high speed sounds like the preoccupation of extreme sport adrenaline junkies, which may partially explain Sullivan's quick jump to panicky lament in the next few paragraphs:

When it comes to sitting down and actually reading a multiple-page print-out, or even, God help us, a book, however, my mind seizes for a moment. After a paragraph, I’m ready for a new link. But the prose in front of my nose stretches on.

I get antsy. I skim the footnotes for the quick info high that I’m used to. No good. I scan the acknowledgments, hoping for a name I recognise. I start again.

A few paragraphs later, I reach for the laptop. It’s not that I cannot find the time for real reading, for a leisurely absorption of argument or narrative. It’s more that my mind has been conditioned to resist it.

In trying to name what's at stake here, the 45-year-old journalist and hyper-blogger even displays nostalgia for a computer-less yesteryear:

The experience of reading only one good book for a while, and allowing its themes to resonate in the mind, is what we risk losing. When I was younger I would carry a single book around with me for days, letting its ideas splash around in my head, not forming an instant judgment (for or against) but allowing the book to sit for a while, as the rest of the world had its say – the countryside or pavement, the crowd or train carriage, the armchair or lunch counter. Sometimes, human beings need time to think things through, to allow themselves to entertain a thought before committing to it.

The white noise of the ever-faster information highway may, one fears, be preventing this. The still, small voice of calm that refreshes a civilisation may be in the process of being snuffed out by myriad distractions.

Sullivan is no Luddite, and closes his column with the hopeful assumption that human society will in due time gain mastery of this and every new technology, as it has writing, printing, radio, and television (Sullivan's inclusion of television is an unfortunate choice). He suggests that part of this mastery may involve telling the web where it gets off at regular intervals--i.e. taking a "sabbath" from our many information gadgets, an idea taken up and expanded in Mark Glaser's fine piece at PBS, which you would do well to take up and read...offline.

These pieces raise more questions than a month's worth of Sullivan's posts (1,200+!) could address, but they are particularly refreshing as evidence that there remains among some a sense that humans--amazingly adaptable though we may be--retain a given shape that is not infinitely malleable. We are not information processing units, but people. And whether we willingly acknowledge it, or the universe forces us to bedgrudgingly admit it, we're all sabbath-shaped people.

Posted by Derek Keefe at June 27, 2008 | Comments (1)

Cathy Lynn Grossman's recent USA Today article on William Young's surprise bestseller The Shack is her second in a month, this one shifting attention to the long-developing and growing backlash against the book coming from a number of influential voices concerned about the book's implicit theological claims.

Several conservative Protestant heavyweights--Al Mohler, Chuck Colson, Mark Driscoll, and influential blogger Tim Challies--have sounded off on the dangers of The Shack's vision of God, salvation, and the Church, creating a quartet of caution for the casual Christian reader. These strong cautions are all the more notable in light of the over-the-top endorsement from one of evangelicalism's most respected spiritual sages, Eugene Peterson, which is featured on the book's back cover.

Among other things, this growing backlash broaches important questions about the proper relationship between art, theology, and the Church for evangelicals and their close kin. What does it mean for artists to be faithful to the confessional Christian traditions and communities of which they are a part, especially that largest of communions--the communion of the saints across time, space, and tradition? If we regard the Nicene Creed as a shared expression of that broad communion, what does it mean for an artist, perhaps a writer such as William Young, to be faithful to that confession?

Switching directions, we must also ask what it means for Christian traditions and communities to be faithful to artists and their craft. This, too, is a theological question: How does the Church show good faith toward those sub-creators in God's human economy whose very creative inclinations are evidence that they bear the image of a God who delights in creating? Making a place for art and the artist is a way of affirming the human and creational pattern that the Christian God calls "very good."

My hunch is that we probably see a failure to keep faith on both sides here, and that it would be a good thing for all of God's Church to discuss the when's, where's, why's, and how's of our mutual infidelities.

Along the way we might also want to pause to think about what the phenomenal grassroots popularity of an iconoclastic novel such as The Shack--1.1 million copies in print, 500,000 more to be printed in June, UK rights just purchased--tells us about the attitudes and pastoral realities churches must reckon with on the ground.

Posted by Derek Keefe at May 30, 2008 | Comments (63)

Never underestimate the power of an Oprah endorsement. Ever since she branded German-born spirituality guru Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose the 61st Oprah Book Club selection in January 2008, the book has sold 3.5 million copies. Over the past several weeks Oprah and Tolle have hosted unprecedented free "webinars," on which Oprah-Tolle discuss a chapter from the book each week and field live questions from the online audience. That audience grew to 2 million people.

Tolle's message is based largely in Eastern spirituality, though he draws from Christian language and imagery (such as the book's title). Tolle defines the human problem as a false self - what he calls "egoic mind patterns," which can be overcome by acknowledging oneness with ultimate reality, or "God." Here's how Greg Boyd, senior pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, summarizes it:

Tolle espouses a rather typical Eastern metaphysics in which the true "you" is not the "you" that is distinct from other people, but the (alleged) "you" that is one with the universe. To grasp this, imagine waves on an ocean. Your individual ego is one such wave, but the true "you" in the Eastern religious worldview is the ocean itself - as it is for me and every other "wave." The wave-"you" is limited and temporary, but the ocean-"you" is unlimited and eternal.

Oprah's website reports that she and Tolle will be offering another webinar session beginning June 16.

Boyd aside, seemingly few evangelicals have taken the time to engage A New Earth and offer a thoughtful, biblical response - perhaps because, as Peter Jones, writing for Christian Science Monitor puts it, A New Earth's missteps are rather old:

For Tolle, "knowing self and knowing God become one and the same." The millions who've turned to Tolle might naturally conclude: I am the "I Am." Sound familiar? It should. According to the Bible, such "knowledge" springs from the oldest error of all: man's desire to be "as gods."

Stay tuned to CT for our upcoming analysis of the Oprah-Tolle craze in the next two weeks.

Related coverage:

Greg Boyd's review of A New Earth at his blog, "Random Reflections"

The Real Secret of the Universe | Why we disdain feel-good spirituality but shouldn't. (May 2007)

The Church of O | With a congregation of 22 million viewers, Oprah Winfrey has become one of the most influential spiritual leaders in America. (April 2002)

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty at May 9, 2008 | Comments (6)

It seems Steve Kreuscher has let his status as a denizen of Zion (Illinois, that is) go to his head. He's asked a judge to legally change his name to the motto that backs our money: In God We Trust.

Believe it. First name, In God. Last name, We Trust. The reason, he explains in detailed story from Daily Herald, is that God has been good to him, and he wants the world to know. The also reveals a few other interesting name changes from recent memory:

Santa Claus: Robert Rion of Mundelein, 1997

GoVeg.com: Karin Robertson of Virginia, 2003

Megatron: Michael Burrows of Washington, 2007

Optimus Prime: Scott Nall of Ohio, 2001

Pro-Life: Marvin Richardson of Idaho, 2008

Low Tax: Byron Looper of Tennessee, 1998

Jesus Christ: Jose Espinal of New York, 2005

Some people need to just be happy with their Christian name.

This post originally appeared, in slightly different form, at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at May 7, 2008 | Comments (5)

April 25th marked the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's annual Day of Silence, described by the Network's website as a "student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment--in effect, the silencing--experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies." Not surprisingly, the nationwide event elicited a range of responses from evangelical Christian groups at both the national and local level, and therefore offers promise as an occasion for further reflection about what form Christian witness should take in a pluralistic democratic society.

Boycott, in the form of students staying home from school that day, was advised by both Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association. This strategy was often joined to protest, as seen at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington (an eastside suburb of Seattle). According to a Seattle Times article, not only were 495 out of 1,410 students not at school for the day--"including 85 athletes whose parents had asked that they be excused for their personal beliefs"--but "about 100 people joined the Rev. Ken Hutcherson, a prominent anti-gay-rights activist, in prayer and song that questioned the dedication of a school day to what they said was a controversial political cause." The week before, Hutcherson, pastor of the local Antioch Bible Church, had called for 1,000 "prayer warriors" to join him in an ad in a local paper.

A form of protest was also displayed by Alexander Nuxholl, a sophomore at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Illinois. Nuxholl was granted the right to wear a shirt that read, "Be Happy, Not Gay" on the Day of Silence by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court also ordered the school district not to discipline him for wearing the shirt. Nuxholl's case was litigated by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian nonprofit legal alliance based in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The ADF also sponsored a countermeasure or alternative to the Day of Silence, a second common strategy for Christian witness. The annual Day of Truth, which came three days after the the Day of Silence, was, according to its website, "established to counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective." Christian students are encouraged to wear T-shirts and pass out cards (outside of class time) that read:

I'm speaking the Truth to break the silence.
True tolerance means that people with differing--even opposing--viewpoints can freely exchange ideas and respectfully listen to each other.
It's time for an honest conversation about homosexuality.
There's freedom to change if you want to.
Let's talk.

This year marked the fourth for the Day of Truth (roughly 7,000 participants), and the thirteenth Day of Silence (roughly 500,000 participants).

In addition to boycott, protest, and the creation of an alternative, the Day of Silence saw another response from evangelical Christians--participation. The Golden Rule Pledge is promoted by Grove City College Psychology Professor Warren Throckmorton as an option for "straight Christian and conservative students [who] are conflicted about this day. They do not affirm homosexual behavior but they also loathe disrespect, harrassment or violence toward any one, including their GLBT peers." This response urges Christian students to act in accordance with the message on the cards they are urged to give out:

This is what I'm doing:

I pledge to treat others the way I want to be treated.

Will you join me in this pledge?

"Do to others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31).

The Golden Rule Pledge website features first-hand accounts from Christian students who participated in this year's Day of Silence, including Jordyne Krumroy of Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, who convinced ASU's Campus Crusade and InterVarsity Fellowship ministries to support Christian students such as her who chose to duct tape their mouths shut for a day.

Evangelicals are by definition a gospel-proclaiming people. Part of our becoming a wise people is learning to match our proclamation both to the manner of the Christ we proclaim, as well as to the occasion before us. Gospel wisdom, then, means not just learning when to speak, but what part of God's good news to speak first, and how that news should be delivered. On occasion, we may even find the best way to begin to "speak" this marvelous news is to remain silent.

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Posted by Derek Keefe at May 2, 2008 | Comments (19)

Will Higgins's report on attendance levels at Holy Week services at a military base in northern Iraq is intriguing on several levels. First, although there are some 4,000 soldiers stationed at the base, the chaplains deemed 150 chairs and 3 Easter services more than sufficient to accommodate the number of soldiers inclined to attend. A Good Friday screening of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ drew only four soldiers, two of whom snoozed their way through it.

While such anecdotal evidence from a solitary military base is by no means enough to establish statistical significance, it does at the very least challenge conventional wisdom that there are no atheists in foxholes. Looking around for other media coverage of Easter services among American military in Iraq, I found little of interest save a small collection of photos that revealed services most notable for their sparse attendance (Be sure to click on the third photo to see if you can identify the gun at the foot of the praying soldier's feet). Sergeant Christopher McFadden of Indiana National Guard’s 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team finds the low attendance "dumbfounding." "If you saw the possibility of dying in front of you," he continues, "now would be the time to open the door and at least look inside."

Although I tend to share McFaddens' surprise, low attendance levels at Easter services is not the only aspect of the article I find intriguing. For one, the article points out that McFadden, an ardent Christian, carries around a metal-bound Bible printed during World War II for distribution to American soldiers, a Bible whose carrier in three previous tours of duty--in WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq--has returned home safely. McFadden had hoped this Bible and its 3-0 record would provide an entry point for evangelizing his comrades. Instead, he sincerely laments that for them this Bible is "more of an artifact, a good-luck charm, than a symbol of God's power." McFadden's comments raise interesting questions about the locus of God's power, and how we associate that power with particular material objects. Where does the power of Bibles--metal-bound or otherwise--reside? Is it in the "thing" itself and indifferent to the disposition of its carrier, or do its readers, hearers, and heed-ers know the power of God to save from death via receiving the Living Word that is not limited to any one particular copy of the Bible?

Second, the article contains a sidebar indicating that Franklin Delano Roosevelt included a foreword to the special-issue Bible "commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the armed forces of the United States." Operating in a cultural climate sensitive to questions of church and state, such words at first sounded odd to me--from another time with different sensibilities. But when I read the words of McFadden's pastor just a few lines down, I was reminded that these sensibilities are still with us. Apparently, just before McFadden departed on his tour of duty, his pastor told the congregation to think of McFadden as any other missionary, "except this one's paid for by the government."

Most intriguing of all, however, is the cryptic quote from "missionary" McFadden that closes the article. In an attempt to make sense of the war and his place in it, McFadden employs an oft-used interpretive lens in reflecting on the mysteries of divine providence: "We're in the desert for a reason. God has put us here to find ourselves." McFadden's quote shows us that for at least one soldier, making sense of the war is a "bottom-up" affair that begins with personal experience and plays out in the terrain of the heart rather than the combat zone of northern Iraq or the landscape of contemporary geopolitics.

Sgt. McFadden leaves me wondering which is more notable--the apparent lack of faith among the military, or the theological ruminations of one of the faithful.

Posted by Derek Keefe at March 24, 2008 | Comments (14)

Easter lilies, marshmallow peeps, and sin will be upon us this Sunday.

To be more precise, a "notion of sin" might be a common theme in the pews this Sunday, as USA Today describes in a piece today. "Without an idea of sin, Easter is meaningless," Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll tells Cathy Lynn Grossman.

Grossman writes about the Pope's recent "Seven Deadlies" (which David Neff writes about just below). A new survey by Ellison Research showed that 87 percent of U.S. adults believe that sin exists, defined as "something that is almost always considered wrong, particularly from a religious or moral perspective."

She contrasts pastors like Texas pastor Joel Osteen, who doesn't mention sin in his TV sermons or Your Best Life Now, with New York pastor Tim Keller, who says he provides an explanation for what sin actually is.

"They do get the idea of branding, of taking a word or term and filling it with your own content, so I have to rebrand the word 'sin,' " Keller tells Grossman. "Around here it means self-centeredness, the acorn from which it all grows. Individually, that means 'I live for myself, for my own glory and happiness, and I'll work for your happiness if it helps me.' Communally, self-centeredness is destroying peace and justice in the world, tearing the net of interwovenness, the fabric of humanity."

While non-religious fluff novalties like peeps remain quite popular, Rev. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville wonders whether pastors will make a sin connection this Sunday.

"All the Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are even more extraneous to the purpose of Easter than Santa is to Christmas," Mohler says. "At least Santa Claus was based on a saint. I wonder whether even some Christian churches are making the connection between Christ's death and resurrection and victory over sin - the linchpin doctrine of Christianity."

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at March 20, 2008 | Comments (14)

Too much press coverage misunderstood what the Vatican was doing in issuing its recent list of serious sins. (See the excellent media criticism piece by Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion.)

But as you engage in serious self-examination this Holy Week, you might want to read a light-hearted op/ed posted today at the Indianapolis Star website (the piece originated with sister newspaper Noblesville Ledger).

Ledger columnist Jane Younce reflects on the new list of sins and finds them, well, not as personally challenging as the old Seven Deadlies: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Those were sins that everyone had to avoid. Whereas the new list seems to be dominated by sins of the rich and powerful: embryo-destroying stem cell research, environmental pollution, poverty, excessive wealth, etc.

It's not that we can do nothing about embryonic stem-cell research or environmental pollution. I recycle and use compact fluorescents, but I don't really think the Vatican is counting the occasional unrecycled paper cup among the mortal sins. That warning about environmental pollution is surely for the captains of industry.

The danger that Jane Younce's delightful column hints at is this: It is easy to feel righteous about recycling that urethane foam milkshake cup and to forget about the gluttony that I abetted by buying that milkshake.

But don't let me blather on. Just read Younce's op/ed.

Posted by David Neff at March 20, 2008 | Comments (4)

Controversial biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has a new book out, but this time he's not bent on tackling issues of scriptural discrepancies, as he did in his most (in)famous work, Misquoting Jesus (see Books and Culture's review from 2005). This time, Ehrman founds his agnosticism on the Bible's seemingly equivocal answers to the question, How can a loving God allow terrible things to happen to people?

"I realized I couldn't explain any longer why there could be such pain and misery in the world that was supposedly ruled by an all-powerful and loving God," the religion professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told the San Diego Union-Tribune over the weekend. The problem of suffering "put me over the top," says Ehrman. "So, I became an agnostic."

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question - Why We Suffer (HarperOne) traces Ehrman's change in convictions about God and Scripture based on his inability to reconcile the goodness of God with the suffering of man. Ehrman explores and ultimately disputes the way suffering is handled in biblical accounts: as punishment for wrongdoing (Genesis), as an outcome of others' wrongdoing (throughout the Psalms), as part of redemption (the Gospels), or as part of the mystery of God (Job).

Ehrman finds these varied explanations problematic, as he does chalking the question of theodicy up to something beyond human knowledge: "If you say it's a mystery, then what you're saying is there's no answer." And having no answer is apparently insufficient for Ehrman.

For other agnostics, though, encountering believers who have profound hope and peace despite suffering is enough to at least crack a window open for belief. This is what happened to John Marks, a former 60 Minutes producer who traces his journey into and out of faith in his new spiritual memoir, Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind (Ecco). In a striking interview in this weekend's Boston Globe, Marks tells of a close friendship with an evangelical couple, the McWhinneys, that emerged from Marks's research for his book:

When I first met the McWhinneys, [I thought] they were almost walking caricatures of the evangelical Christian. They believe in the Rapture, that when the end time comes, people will be taken up into the air, and the nonbelievers will be left behind on earth to suffer. There was a cardboard quality, I thought, to their belief.

When I met them the second time, after we'd done the "60 Minutes" piece, they told me about their bipolar son, roughly my age, who had tried to kill himself [and] had disappeared and was believed to be living in a homeless shelter in Dallas and whom they had decided to commit. They spoke with great sorrow. They didn't say he was possessed by the devil. They resented that characterization - and remember, these are Christians who believe there is a living Satan. We agreed I would join them for church [the following] Sunday.

Five hours later, their son walked up the onramp of a highway and was killed by a car. On Sunday, I got in the car, we were having a chat, and then Don suddenly told me their son had been killed. [He said] his son was not gone - he was walking the streets of the heavenly city, and we know from Revelations that that city has walls made of pure jasper - describing this world that, for nonbelievers, is just pure fantasy. I became aware of the way this sense that God is real, that there is this heavenly kingdom - it is not window-dressing. In moments of grief and deep sorrow, people like the McWhinneys do reach for this, and it is the consolation.

While believers may not be able to give a thoroughly coherent reason for why God allows his followers to suffer - and debates about theodicy will likely continue among theologians until Judgment Day - we may at least be able to provide a glimpse into "the peace that passes all understanding" as we respond to crises in our own lives and come out praising the Creator for his unbounded goodness.

Posted by Katelyn Beaty at February 18, 2008 | Comments (8)

Lost in the media storm preceding and following Super Tuesday, and the actual storms that debilitated or devastated much of the US that same day, was media coverage of the start of Lent, arguably the most recognized of the exclusively Christian seasons on the Church's liturgical calendar. In reviewing English-speaking coverage of this turning of the seasons, I was struck by the difference between US media reports and those issuing from across the pond in the UK.

US stories were generally conventional - though sometimes oddly technical or whimsical - and documented an approach to the season that was consistently pious, yet often private in scope, focusing on interior spiritual attitudes or individual struggles of the will in forgoing chocolate, coffee, alcohol, or insert-your-weakness-of-the-flesh-here for the 40-day period. (Jane Hawes's article is notable in its attempt to balance both the private-public and negative-positive dimensions of the season.)

Stories from the UK, on the other hand, conveyed a theological posture toward Lent that emphasized the public dimension of Christian commitment. Most notable is the Tearfund carbon fast mentioned by Tim Morgan in an earlier blog, which was launched by the Anglican bishops of London and Liverpool, and backed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, as well as scientist Sir John Houghton, an evangelical who formerly chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment. The proposal received considerable coverage in UK press (Daily Telegraph; The Guardian; BBC News; New Consumer), though its only mentions in the US were on one or two blogs, a university newspaper, and an ezine.

Also worth mentioning is the Lent Endurance Challenge issued by the UK organization Church Action on Poverty, and backed by several Anglican bishops, as well as Catholic, Methodist, and Baptist church leaders in the UK. The Challenge is to live the life of a refused asylum seeker for one week, which involves donating one's normal weekly food budget in exchange for ?3.50 and the typical food parcel supplied to the homeless by local charities. The hope is to give participants a glimpse into the life of these "living ghosts," who are "essentially airbrushed out of existence as ?failed' asylum seekers," but, lacking money to return home, remain in the UK, unnoticed or ignored by society at large.

These constructive and creative public applications of Christian theological commitments make my own internal ruminations about whether I should give up coffee or fried foods for Lent seem, if not entirely inconsequential, unimaginative and blatantly disengaged from my neighbor and the world. If Lent is about submitting to suffering for the sake of identification with our Lord, whose own suffering was always for the sake of carrying forward God's redemptive intent for the whole world, navel-gazing US Christians like me may want to look across the seas to spark our flickering theological imaginations.

Posted by Derek Keefe at February 8, 2008 | Comments (1)

We voters just can't make up our minds. One day it's Rudy. Then Huck. Hillary. Then Obama. Then Hillary again. Hey, here's McCain, risen from the political dead!

Certainly one reason we can't decide is because no one candidate fulfills all of our hopes and dreams. One has experience (sort of). Another has charisma. One speaks of conservative values but has other issues. Another champions those same values but is a . . . Mormon. Some say the only African-American candidate isn't black enough, or the only woman candidate not womanly enough. They're like the old commercial . . . everything you always wanted in a candidate - and less.

Another reason for voters' fickleness is the economy. If you're not covered at work, private health insurance is unaffordable for all but the wealthy. Gas and milk cost three bucks a gallon. Economic growth appears to be stagnating, and the growing mortgage crisis is hammering the real estate market and home values. Big-screen TVs and other luxury items aside, according to The Two-Income Trap, it generally takes two incomes to match the standard of living that one income provided a generation ago, and many people feel they are in danger of slipping from the ranks of the middle class.

Americans' priorities are also in flux early into the primary season. The survey found voters to be in their darkest mood about the economy in 18 years, by some measures; 62 percent said they believed that the economy was getting worse, the highest percentage since the run-up to the recession in 1990. Seventy-five percent said they believed that the country had "seriously gotten off on the wrong track," also similar to levels in the early 1990s, when such discontent fueled the presidential candidacy of Bill Clinton.

Worries about the economy now dominate the voters' agenda, even more so than the war in Iraq, which framed the early part of this campaign. While change has emerged as an abstract rallying cry in the campaign debate, what the voters mean when they talk about change is clear - new approaches to the economy and the war, according to the poll.

Whatever their personal or policy differences, nearly all candidates are promising "change" in response to consumer angst. Now as the breadwinner in my family, I can understand those fears, and the desire to latch onto someone who promises to fix my financial problems. Sometimes it does seem as if the big corporations have an unfair advantage over consumers, and it feels good for government to "level the playing field."

However, despite our present economic uncertainty, is all this worry really justified? The statistics, though troubling, are not as bad as the election-year rhetoric: Joblessness, at around 5 percent (up from 4.4 percent a year ago), remains low by historical levels. Adjusted for inflation (up 4.3 percent last year), gas and milk don't cost as much relative to our rising incomes as they seem to. Those struggling with "subprime" mortgages, though their pain is real, are a relatively minor percentage of the American people. Despite the considerable challenges we face, the American economy remains the envy of the world.

Every generation worries about the economy (remember the "stagflation" of the seventies?), and while no one knows the future, I would guess that we have less to fear than most generations - even if recession comes. There are many other issues we also must consider, such as the war on terror, peace in the Middle East, abortion, the environment, and other priorities.

Beyond all that, as Christians, we should look at the coming election through the lens of faith, not fear. We are to trust God to provide, not the promises of politicians. As a certain nonpolitical leader once said:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Thus, whatever the economy brings, we are to be busy doing his work - including helping those who really are struggling - trusting him to provide our needs each day.

Posted by Stan Guthrie at January 14, 2008 | Comments (2)

A new study by The Barna Group shows that Americans "remain confident that some of the most amazing stories in the Bible can be taken at face value."

The nationwide survey asked adults their take on six well-known Bible stories (Creation, parting of the Red Sea, David killing Goliath, Daniel in the lion's den, Peter walking on water, the Resurrection of Jesus) whether the story was "literally true, meaning it happened exactly as described in the Bible" or whether they thought the story was "meant to illustrate a principle but is not to be taken literally."

The results are broken down by faith tradition, geography, race, and education. To take one overall finding, though: "The story of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, after being crucified and buried" was the story most widely embraced. Three out of four adults (75 percent) said they interpreted that narrative literally.

Yet polls and anecdotal evidence suggest that 75 percent of Americans are not living dedicated lives to the resurrected Jesus!

This should give us apologetic pause. A great deal of evangelical apologetics is about proving the historicity of the resurrection (or creation--intelligent design or 7-day--but nearly two-thirds of Americans already believe in a literal 7-day creation). The figures suggest that this is NOT the battle ground for most Americans. It is the relevance or meaning of the resurrection that seems to elude Americans. It is not a stretch for most people to believe that a God who created the universe could raise Jesus from the dead, among other miracles--Duh. What is a stretch is understanding what difference it makes.

Perhaps it's time for a new chapter in evangelical apologetics. Not "The Resurrection--Did it Happen?" but "The Resurrection--So What?"

Posted by Mark Galli at October 22, 2007 | Comments (6)

One of the most startling images from the Viet Nam war was the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc. On June 11, 1963, the monk burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection. (You can see Malcolm Brown's famous news photo here and read part of David Halberstam's eyewitness report for the New York Times halfway through this Wikipedia article.)

Thich Quang Duc was protesting the anti-Buddhist discrimination of Ngo Dinh Diem's regime. But the disturbing image of his sacrifice seared itself into the brains of people around the globe. At the time, I didn't understand the logic of self-immolation, but I was deeply moved.

Today Buddhist monks are once again taking to the streets of a South Asian nation, risking their bodies in nonviolent protest against an oppressive regime. This time the country is Myanmar (or Burma, as most Americans still refer to it).

This morning, the AP reported from Yangon (Rangoon):

Soldiers in Myanmar pounded down on dissenters Friday by swiftly breaking up street gatherings of die-hard activists, occupying key Buddhist monasteries and cutting public Internet access. The moves raised concerns that a crackdown on civilians that has killed at least 10 people this week was set to intensify.

By sealing Buddhist monasteries, the government seemed intent on clearing the streets of monks, who have spearheaded the demonstrations and are revered by most of their Myanmar countrymen. This could embolden troops to lash out harder on remaining protesters.

And in the Washington Post, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson commented on the spiritual power of the Buddhist monks' protest.

[T]hese protests have ... shown that nonviolence need not be tame or toothless. The upside-down bowls carried by some of the monks signal that they will not accept alms from the leaders of the regime, denying them the ability to atone for bad deeds or to honor their ancestors. These chanting monks are playing spiritual hardball.

Gerson then mentioned the familiar spiritual analogs in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and the spiritual revolutions that helped to bring down Communism in Eastern Europe. "Religious dissidents have the ability not only to organize opposition to tyrants but also to shame them. Political revolutions often begin as revolutions of the spirit."

Gerson uses the language of spirituality to describe these bold moves against evil and on behalf of freedom. It is ironic that the words spiritual and spirituality have taken on such warm, fuzzy tones in contemporary American speech. They convey the image of spiritual drifters, people who are not anchored to any strong beliefs but are constantly going with the flow as they quest for the next feel-good experience.

Maybe, as these monks face the tear gas and truncheons of the oppressor, they can help us reclaim the hard edge of spirituality in our own culture.

* * *
P.S. Buddhists aren't the only ones resisting the Myanmar government. Christians have also risked their lives in the struggle for freedom. But Christians are largely located in tribal regions away from urban centers like Yangon. For past Christianity Today coverage of tribal Christian resistance see "Burma's Almost Forgotten." And to learn how Christianity came to Burma, you can order Christian History and Biography issue 90, which tells the story of Ann and Adoniram Judson, early missionaries and Bible translators.

Posted by David Neff at September 28, 2007 | Comments (1)

Michael Luo has a piece in Saturday's New York Times on Hillary Clinton's faith:

Mrs. Clinton, the New York senator who is seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has been alluding to her spiritual life with increasing regularity in recent years, language that has dovetailed with efforts by her party to reach out to churchgoers who have been voting overwhelmingly Republican.

Mrs. Clinton's references to faith, though, have come under attack, both from conservatives who doubt her sincerity (one writer recently lumped her with the type of Christians who "believe in everything but God") and liberals who object to any injection of religion into politics. And her motivations have been cast as political calculation by detractors, who suggest she is only trying to moderate her liberal image.

Posted by Rob Moll at July 9, 2007 | Comments (16)

The Daily Herald, a paper of the western suburbs of Chicago, features this story about a young woman:

Kristen Anderson’s world was shattered after the deaths of four friends and her grandmother. As she was grieving those losses, she was raped. Feeling she had no way to cope, she tried to kill herself. She survived, and now shares her story with others, to reach out to those who feel hopeless.

Just another story of God's inscrutably redeeming ways. Both predictable (for we've seen him do this time and again) and wonderful (miracles, no matter how generic, are amazing to behold).

Then again, no miracle is generic, and the problem here is likely a problem of journalism: this is narrative arc that makes sense to a typical 21st century journalist. I'm guessing a deeper look at Kristen's life would suggest something both miraculous and utterly unique.

Posted by Mark Galli at May 29, 2007 | Comments (0)

Last night I attended (and played the organ for) Bob Webber's memorial service. (You can read Bob's Christianity Today obit here.)

The memorial service was wonderful in many ways, but I want to point to one thing in particular. It wasn't about Bob.

Well, yes, it was about Bob, it couldn't help being about Bob, but as someone who has written a multitude of pages and taught innumerable students about worship, Bob insisted that his service focus on the great saving acts of God.

Here is part of what he wrote for the worship leaflet:

As a Christian I have always believed in Christ as the Victor over sin and death. I believe that Christ was the Second Adam, sent to this earth as God Incarnate, suffered death, was buried and rose from the dead to restore the entire creation. I believe that it is God who narrates the entire world and creation, from start to finish. Consequently I have no fear of death although I do fear the process.

Today, there are literally hundreds of different styles one can follow ... for a funeral. However, historic Christian funerals were always about God. I ... truly want [my own funeral] to be about God who created this world, defeated Satan at the cross and rose victorious over death and the grave.

Today we begin with several eulogies, then when those are done, the real funeral begins and it's all about God. I want my funeral to be a testimony to the God who raises us from hopelessness and blesses us with new life in Him. ...

And that is the way it was last night. As a large crowd of mourners packed into Christ Church of Oak Brook, we heard the eulogies first, and then we focused on God, remembering Christ's death and resurrection and looking forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This is the way it should be, because there is no greater comfort than the gospel. Too often funerals play down the reality of death with sentimental poetry such as these lines from Shelley: "he is not dead, he doth not sleep -/ He hath awakened from the dream of life." We don't need romanticism, but redemption - especially at funerals.

Posted by David Neff at May 17, 2007 | Comments (3)

While running my errands this weekend, I listened to the first three disks of the audiobook, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul. The author is Tony Hendra, a great satirist who was a university chum of John Cleese and Graham Chapman and who went on to become the editor-in-chief of Spy.

It is wonderfully comic for a spiritual memoir, but when the author gets serious, he is full of insight. After the stern and aloof husband of the woman he didn't quite seduce dragged the 14-year-old Tony to a monastery to be admonished and shriven, Hendra had a religious experience in which all the mumbo jumbo he'd been taught as a Catholic child suddenly came alive for him--became real! His description of that almost sounds like the classic evangelical conversion story.

But to my point ...

His conversion turned him on to history. Read these few graphs and think of Bob Webber--or even Tom Oden. This is ancient future stuff transplanted into the life of an English Catholic teen.

... [T]his new grasp of the realness of things ... lit up unexpected areas of my life--areas I'd preferred to ignore or endure up till then. History, once my most and then my least favorite subject, resumed center stage. It had become a tedium to study, a forgettable rat's next of dates and places and people, every one of them stone-cold dead and of no relevance to the here and now. Just as Latin was a dead language, history was a dead subject. I asked Mum once why we had to belong to such an incredibly old religion--weren't there any new ones? (She didn't agree or disagree, but she did give me a lurid pamphlet the Jehovah's Witnesses had left behind.)

Now, driven by the need to dig farther and--just as urgently--to experience the actuality of everything I could, history became my new frontier, the past became my future, a vast terra incognita, every discovery of which was another chunk of virgin territory I could claim, bringing with it the glow of ownership, the anticipatory thrill of further exploration.

What if we gave every new convert a subscription to Christian History & Biography? What if we plied them with the great lovers of God--with Pascal and Augustine and Theresa? What if we taught them that they were part of a very, very old religion--taught them to take seriously the communion of the saints?

It seemed to work for the editor of Spy.

Posted by David Neff at May 14, 2007 | Comments (3)

My aunt died yesterday, full of years and ready for eternity.

Peggy Neff was not one of the rich and famous. But though she was not rich, she had many things.

Aunt Peggy was an antique collector who, perhaps, didn’t know how to stop collecting. Her most notable acquisition may have been in 1950s, when she rescued a historic log cabin, which would have been otherwise destroyed, because it sat in the path of the planned Tri-State Tollway (I-294)

What do you do with a log cabin? Peggy had hers added as a new wing to her house. It made a very unusual living room.

With so many antiques, one would wonder about her last will and testament. Fine Christian that she was, she concluded that document this way:

I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them and that is faith in Jesus Christ. If they had that and I had not given them one dollar, they would be rich; and if I had not given them that and I had given them all the world, they would be poor indeed.

Ponder that today, and go read Matthew 6:25-33.

Posted by David Neff at April 25, 2007 | Comments (2)