St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality on the Lower East Side of Manhattan was one of the original communities founded during the Depression by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. When I lived there a few years ago I observed up-close the often tense, sometimes funny interactions between the Catholic . . . . Continue Reading »
The annual “Status of Global Christianity” survey published by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is a cornucopia of numbers: Some are encouraging; others are discouraging; many of them are important for grasping the nature of this particular moment in Christian history. Continue Reading »
Most of the world’s Christians—as well as many non-believers—celebrated the birth of Jesus on December 25. Members of the Egyptian Coptic, Ethiopian, most Slavic Orthodox, and Georgian Orthodox churches, with some Greek Orthodox faithful, will mark the festival on January 7. The fourteen-day difference reflects the retention by certain Orthodox congregations of the Julian calendar, which was replaced by Gregorian reckoning in the majority of Orthodox societies early in the twentieth century. Continue Reading »
A new study out this week shows widening gaps in how different demographics in America approach sexuality and family. The Relationships in America study, produced by the Austin Institute, looks at “how social forces, demography, and religion continue to shape attitudes about family and intimate relationships.” The findings are notable, boosted by a survey that draws from 15,738 respondents ages eighteen to sixty, a very large and representative sample of the general population of the United States. Continue Reading »
If something like ISIS/ISIL were to overrun much of North America, would we be willing to give up our lives for the sake of a gospel so fixated on the self and its needs? Continue Reading »
(Please read my previous post first, if you haven’t.) Try to follow me here: Christianity, I was arguing, necessarily implies an ambivalence towards any moral-political culture. On the one hand, it reinforces much conventional moral content by declaring it to be the object of a divine . . . . Continue Reading »
The essence of Christianity is to love one another, to have compassion, not to judge, but to forgive, to accept – no? Applied to politics, the implication seems obvious: unlimited tolerance, equality of lifestyles, etc: in a word, extreme liberalism. What’s wrong with this picture? . . . . Continue Reading »
Dear Fellow Christian who Continues to Toy with Voting for the Democratic Party, I wish I could honestly say that this fellow, a black church leader whose video is highlighted in this Big Government post , was essentially wrong. But, alas, he isn’t. (Yes, his use of the Bible to back a . . . . Continue Reading »
Having written one , two , three , four ALMOST FAMOUS-driven posts and now this one, I obviously do think it is an excellent film. Its one weakness is a certain complacency, underlined by its ending. I don’t have a problem with happy endings per se, but the one it provides really is too easy. . . . . Continue Reading »
It is no secret that the USA is the most charitable country in the world. Why? Well, we can be, but Dan Palotta of the WSJ points to tradition through our Puritan heritage and says charity was their response to the tensions within their doctrine, “they could do penance for their . . . . Continue Reading »
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