Civil Religion

It's a commonplace to gripe about civil religion in America. It's a standard complaint among many pastors, especially around major civil holidays, to bemoan their congregation's commitment to the civil religion more than Christianity? But what, in a nutshell, is the civil religion on the United States? I've got some excellent academic resources on the …

An Alternative View on the Pussy Riot Verdict in Russia

I just finished reading The Mountain of Silence, by Kyriacos Markides. In the penultimate chapter he is explaining that the break between the Christian East and West is more than just a theological disagreement. Thinking the Eastern Christians as infidels, the Crusaders raped and pillaged. But here’s the kicker: “Churches were desecrated and destroyed” by …

Remembering the 1968 Democratic Convention

Here is a rather remarkable audio clip of experimental radio by Bob Fass reporting from the 1968 Democratic Convention. It was Backstory with the American History Guys who posted this on their Facebook page, by the way. I was in grade school in 1968 so I only vaguely remember the Democratic Convention in Chicago. What …

Hangin’ with the Buddhists

We have new neighbors (in the last couple of months or so) and the neighbors were having a shindig today, so I stopped over to meet them. We've suspected it was some sort of Buddhist temple or monastery, so I've been curious. It is indeed going to be a Lao Buddhist temple. They have not …

Prayer and Magic

Fr. Stephen Freeman, speaking about the "paradox of prayer," points out that in the physical world we typically think in terms of cause and effect, and this is easily transferred to our thinking about prayer. But prayer must be understood in terms of relationship not cause and effect. He then says, The direct connection between …

It’s Not That I’m Rooting Against Him …

Over at ESPN the reporters are gushy about Oscar Pistorius, the sprinter with artificial legs. ESPN asks (rhetorically, I will add), "Who can't be rooting for Pistorius in the quarter finals?" Well, me for one. Pistorius races with a huge disadvantage (no natural legs) and a huge advantage (the highly unnatural spring in his blades) …