In the 1880s, when the bishops of the United States founded The Catholic University of America and obtained a papal charter for it, they intended it to help fulfill their responsibility to teach and promote Catholic faith. The University was governed by a Board of Trustees consisting mainly of bishops and was managed by clerics chosen by that Board. Continue Reading »
There are no teams in thoroughbred racing. Or rather, everyone who follows racing is on the same team—at least for a few weeks in the late spring, when the three races are run that make up the Triple Crown.The lack of partisan fandom in racing has something to do with the brevity of its stars' . . . . Continue Reading »
When I was four years old, I would (so I’m told) stand the ottoman in the living room on its end so that it could serve as a pulpit. I would place my mother’s hardback copy of The Living Bible on it, opening it at the middle, to a passage I couldn’t read. And I would arrange a few stuffed animals in a semi-circle, stumped as to how to provide them with pews but willing to make do regardless. There is still a recording of one of these sermons that my parents have on a cassette tape, that they delight in playing at inopportune times. On that recording I sound emboldened, fiery; I am quoting Bible verses from memory. And that, I think, was the beginning of my devotion to preaching—to the proclamation of the Christian gospel. The ardent, authoritative preaching I heard at First Baptist Church in Conway, Arkansas, where my newlywed parents attended, must have prompted my childhood sermonizing. A recent alumnus of Dallas Theological Seminary, the pastor of First Baptist had been marinated in dispensational theology, a method of biblical interpretation that—its serious (and bizarre) flaws notwithstanding—made for Scripture-centered, whole-canon-focused sermons. I must have absorbed his passion, and I must have admired it. Why else would I perform such an elaborate flattery of imitation? Buried somewhere in my attic is a sheaf of drawings I made as that pastor preached, week after week—a three year-old’s scrawled renditions of David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Jesus hanging on the cross. And these were the stories I spoke about when I addressed my congregation of plush toys from behind the ottoman pulpit. Continue Reading »
According to the recent study from the Pew Research Center, 22.8 percent of U.S. adults and 35 percent of millennials are religiously unaffiliated. The nones are by all indications a diverse group. Among the nones are all the familiar categories of unbelief or quasi-belief: committed atheists, agnostics, the “spiritual but not religious,” and active seekers. Continue Reading »
The enormous Duggar family has been in the public eye since their TLC reality series, 19 Kids and Counting, premiered in 2008. In the lineup of TLC shows about oddball families—the twins-plus-sextuplets family; the polygamist family; the little-people family; the hundred-proof hillbilly family—the Duggars are distinguished by their amazing fecundity, and by their commitment to baby-names starting with J (Josh, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph).They are distinguished, too, by their vocal affiliation with Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull—hierarchical and pro-procreation movements within Evangelicalism, which strike some observers as creepy and cultish. The Duggar kids are homeschooled and don’t mix much with the outside world; this, too, strikes some observers as creepy and cultish. All of the Duggar girls perm their hair and wear long skirts—sartorial tics that some observers find creepy and cultish. Did I mention that all the Duggar kids’ names start with J? (Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedediah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin …) At a certain point, this starts to look creepy and cultish. Continue Reading »
Should pastors grease the Kardashian celebrity machine by mentioning Bruce Jenner from the pulpit? There are good arguments for ignoring the whole thing, but I think that’s a pastoral mistake. So much of our cultural trajectory converges on Bruce: our rampant Gnosticism, our confidence in technology, our moral libertarianism and determined flight from biblical standards, our cult of fame, our sexual self-contradictions. Bruce Jenner will be forgotten soon enough, but what he represents isn’t going away, because transgressiveness is one of the few cultural imperatives that we are not permitted to transgress.If we preach about Bruce, what should we say? When I asked the Jewish theologian David Novak how a synagogue would respond, his answer was stunning in its simplicity: First, “Jews would not recognize Jenner as a woman”; then, “Torah forbids castration.” Castration doesn’t turn a man into a woman. It only leaves him a damaged man. Continue Reading »
In the 2002 Brazilian film City of God (Cidade de Deus), the narrator, Rocket, provides the audience with a kind of social taxonomy of the eponymous favela during a street party. There was the “samba crowd,” the “soul crowd,” the gangs and the “religious crowd.” (Comunidade do crença, . . . . Continue Reading »
Does Islam worship the one God of Abraham, like Jews and Christians, or some other god? Many strident voices insist Allah is a different god. Inconveniently, though, the three great monotheistic faiths claim Abraham as their patriarch and resulting from that, each claim Abraham’s one God as their . . . . Continue Reading »
As they stand, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) do, contrary to Monsignor Sorondo’s assertion noted in an article published Friday, include abortion. The term “reproductive rights” has come to include abortion. Therefore, the use of “reproductive rights” in SDG 5.6 means that the SDGs list as a goal abortion as a right. This is troubling indeed, and not to be brushed aside. Continue Reading »
“Gridlock” along the Potomac – the difficulties the Congress has in getting things done, the difficulties the Congress and the White House have in cooperating to get things done, or both – is regularly deplored by pols, pundits, and citizens alike. My contrarian view is that this kind of “gridlock” can serve useful public purposes, acting as a brake on passions and a gauge of the nation’s moral health. As George Will has long insisted, “gridlock” – in the sense of making it difficult to get legislation passed – is built into the American system. The Framers of the Constitution saw fit to establish three branches of government and a Congress with two houses; they also required congressional supermajorities for certain grave matters, like ratifying treaties, convicting impeached officials, or sending constitutional amendments to the states. And that is a prescription for something resembling “gridlock.” Continue Reading »
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