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Friday November 20, 2009

Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox together

This is great news, and I'm thrilled that Jonah, the OCA metropolitan, is a signatory:

Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

"We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence," it says.

The manifesto, to be released on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, is an effort to rejuvenate the political alliance of conservative Catholics and evangelicals that dominated the religious debate during the administration of President George W. Bush. The signers include nine Roman Catholic archbishops and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America.

Good for them. This ecumenism of the trenches is a great thing. More of that, please, and less of this, from the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Jose, California, which starts: "Secretly, San Jose is the most gay-friendly diocese in the nation. And now, one parish wants the world to know." My Catholic friend Irene Groot once wrote an essay about her San Jose diocese parish, which removed the crucifix and replaced it with a Jung-inspired "birth canal cross," i.e., a cross with a hole in it where Jesus once was. Which says a lot. Which says everything important about what's going on in that parish, and perhaps in that diocese.

The culture war isn't only between churches and the world, but also between churches that refuse to conform to the world, and those who cannot conform fast enough. I am encouraged and thrilled to know which side of the divide my bishop (who is also my metropolitan) is on. Choose today whom ye will serve...

Thursday November 19, 2009

Prosperity gospel and the economic crash

I encourage you to read Hanna Rosin's cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic, citing the role the spread of the prosperity gospel -- the idea that God wants you to be rich, and to have nice things -- to the economic crash. The title is "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?", which is an unfortunate headline, because what she really means to ask is: Did this faddish but counterfeit form of Christianity play a role in provoking the economic crisis?

It's impossible to quantify the degree to which it may have done, of course, but Rosin makes a good case that the utter insanity of the prosperity gospel -- coupled with the flat-out greed of bankers willing to make loans to gullible and greedy Jesus followers -- did harm. She writes, "Demographically, the growth of the prosperity gospel tracks fairly closely to the pattern of foreclosure hot spots. Both spread in two particular kinds of communities--the exurban middle class and the urban poor." As a Christian, reading about these crackpot preachers and their followers really burns me up. Here's the philosophical and historical gist of her piece:

Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America's middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture--a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.

In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his "success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan." The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man--a "speculative confidence man," Lears calls him, who prefers "risky ventures in real estate," and a more "fluid, mobile democracy." The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with "grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God." The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like Garay: "The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of the things I've done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me--that I'll be the one."

To be sure, this is not a drive-by trashing on prosperity preaching. Rosin really does try to understand its appeal. I found myself most affected by the way this stuff is taking off among minorities. Excerpt:

More recently, critics have begun to argue that the prosperity gospel, echoed in churches across the country, might have played a part in the economic collapse. In 2008, in the online magazine Religion Dispatches, Jonathan Walton, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside, warned:
Narratives of how "God blessed me with my first house despite my credit" were common ... Sermons declaring "It's your season of overflow" supplanted messages of economic sobriety and disinterested sacrifice. Yet as folks were testifying about "what God can do," little attention was paid to a predatory subprime-mortgage industry, relaxed credit standards, or the dangers of using one's home equity as an ATM.

In 2004, Walton was researching a book about black televangelists. "I would hear consistent testimonies about how 'once I was renting and now God let me own my own home,' or 'I was afraid of the loan officer, but God directed him to ignore my bad credit and blessed me with my first home,'" he says. "This trope was so common in these churches that I just became immune to it. Only later did I connect it to this disaster."

See? And here's a bit about how it appeals to Latino immigrants (who disproportionately took out subprime mortgages). Excerpt:

Among Latinos the prosperity gospel has been spreading rapidly. In a recent Pew survey, 73 percent of all religious Latinos in the United States agreed with the statement: "God will grant financial success to all believers who have enough faith." For a generation of poor and striving Latino immigrants, the gospel seems to offer a road map to affluence and modern living. Garay's church is comprised mostly of first-generation immigrants. More than others I've visited, it echoes back a highly distilled, unself-conscious version of the current thinking on what it means to live the American dream.

And:

While it sounds absurd, this kind of message can have a positive influence, according to Tony Tian-Ren Lin, a researcher at the University of Virginia who has made a close study of Latino prosperity gospel congregations over the years. These churches typically take in people who had "been basically dropped into the world from pretty primitive settings"--small towns in Latin America with no electricity or running water and very little educational opportunity. In their new congregation, their pastor slowly walks them through life in the U.S., both inside and outside of church, until they become more confident. "In Mexico, nobody ever told them they could do anything," says Lin, who was himself raised in Argentina. He finds the message at prosperity churches to be quintessentially American. "They are taught they can do absolutely anything, and it's God's will. They become part of the elect, the chosen. They get swept up in the manifest destiny, this idea that God has lifted Americans above everyone else."

It says something that the most vibrant form of religion in America used to be the old Protestant kind that said if you worked hard and disciplined yourself and lived right, you would prosper. It was in some ways a myth, of course, but there were real truths about human nature embedded in it, and the kind of society built out of that ethic was likely to be a healthy one. But now the most vibrant form of religion might well be this corrupt casino Christianity. That says something too about our country, and its future.

These prosperity gospel jackals are the enemy of the Gospel. But I have to admit that I have never been poor, so I don't know what it's like to be tempted by this kind of pseudo-spirituality.

Sunday November 15, 2009

Buck up, soldier, God will fix you

My friend Tara McKelvey has published her Templeton-Cambridge research. It's about how Christian ideology has corrupted psychiatric care for some emotionally traumatized American veterans. Excerpt:

In a 2004 study of approximately 1,400 Vietnam veterans, almost 90 percent Christian, researchers at Yale found that nearly one-third said the war had shaken their faith in God and that their religion no longer provided comfort for them. The Yale study found that these soldiers were more likely than others to seek mental health treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home. It was not that these veterans had unusually high confidence in government or especially good information about services at VA hospitals. Instead, they had fallen into a spiritual abyss and were desperate to find a way out. The trauma of war seems to be especially acute for men and women whose faith in a benevolent God is challenged by the carnage they have witnessed.

More:

The story of the mistreatment of returning veterans from Iraq is well known and shocking. But the role of religious ideology in that mistreatment--how, inside the government, it was a potent tool in the betrayal of an overwhelmingly Christian Army--is much less known.
"I couldn't stand to hear that phrase any longer--'God was watching over me,'" Benimoff wrote.

He wasn't watching over the good men I knew in Iraq. Faith was the center of my life yet it failed to explain why I came home and those soldiers did not. The phrase was a Christian nicety, a cliché that when put to the test didn't fit reality.

Somehow, American pop Christianity has little or nothing of value to say to the kind of evil soldiers returning from war have seen and lived. A story like this makes me angry, because it makes psychological suffering seem like a spiritual or moral matter, i.e., "You're in pain, soldier, because you lack faith." That's not only wrong, it's cruel.

Thursday November 12, 2009

Why don't gay Catholics leave?

It occurs to me that there's a good discussion to be had around this question, but let me say in no uncertain terms that I'm going to unpublish any comments that are abusive, vitriolic or significantly off-topic.

So, why don't gay Catholics leave the Catholic Church? It could be that they are part of a parish that, in violation of Catholic teaching, affirms that their homosexuality is a moral good -- in other words, they don't feel at the local level any significant pressure from Catholicism's prohibitions against homosexual behavior. (This is, I think, why so many conservative Episcopalians remain Episcopalian). It's fairly easy to live as a Catholic without having one's homosexuality (or sex life at all) come up in parish life. In all my time as a Catholic, the only time I ever heard homosexuality addressed from the pulpit was two or three times at my Fort Lauderdale parish, in which the priest attacked "homophobia."

I could be wrong, but I very much doubt Andrew Sullivan ever has to hear a word spoken against homosexuality at his parish in Washington, DC. If he did, it's not hard to find parishes that don't hassle him about it, and to live one's life as an openly gay Catholic without having any kind of in-your-face conflict. In most ways dealing with the church's hard teachings (hard for our culture to take, I mean), most American Catholic parishes are functionally AWOL. It's Moralistic Therapeutic Deism all the way down. And not just in Catholic churches, I hasten to say! The idea that poor, put-upon gay Catholics are having to sit there every week and hear priests denounce their affections from the pulpit is simply nonsense, as is the hoary pop-culture cliche that priests are obsessed with sex and harp on it in sermons. For better or for worse, that just doesn't happen.

But the Church's principled stance against homosexuality bothers him a great deal -- and it should bother him, given what he believes is true about homosexuality. In a case like the gay marriage referendum in Maine, in which the state's Catholic bishops lobbied against same-sex marriage, it makes perfect sense for gay Catholics who believe the Church is deeply wrong about homosexuality to be offended, inasmuch as the Catholic bishops, in fighting for what the Catholic Church teaches is true, contributed to a public policy outcome detrimental to the same-sex marriage cause. For gay Catholics, that's not nothing.

So why do they stay in a church that condemns homosexuality [Clarification: that condemns homosexual acts, but not homosexual persons, a distinction many gays insist is one without a difference -- RD], and that's not going to change on the subject, when many (at least in big cities) have plenty of other options for worshiping as Christians in churches that fully affirm their sexuality? What is the reason for staying in a Church whose teaching on sexuality you definitively reject (as distinct from wrestling with in good faith), and in so doing implicitly reject the Church's binding authority in matters of faith and morals? I'm not asking as a rhetorical question; I'd really like to hear what you readers -- gay and straight, Catholic and non-Catholic -- think. One non-Catholic reader wrote to me this morning about his own wrestling with ordination in his Protestant denomination, and how his experience arguing with church folks who doubted his motives for seeking ordination under his particular set of conditions taught him something about why gay Catholics stay:

Over the years, I have come to realize there was probably no small measure of passive-aggressiveness in my stubbornness. I still believe the call to ministry was and is there, but I still can see some measure of seeking affirmation, even if it meant causing a stir along the way. What I have come to realize about gay ordination as a result, even though I am not a supporter, is that what those pursuing it desire above all else is to force the Church, not only to acknowledge them, but also to affirm them. Thus, they act in this passive-aggressive manner and then proceed on to outright aggressiveness. They can't move on because to do so is to admit defeat in their quest for affirmation. Yes, they certainly could gain that elsewhere, but that's not what they want. They want everyone's hearts and minds, not just the like-minded. And to gain that, there is no measure of resistance they will not endure.

This, by the way, is why I have no faith at all that the orthodox churches, synagogues and religious institutions will be left alone once gay rights advocates have the fullest constitutional protection. Tolerance will quickly be insufficient; affirmation will be the minimal standard -- or else.

That's my view. I welcome yours -- but again, be as sharp and as pointed as you like, but vitriol, abuse, name-calling and the like will be deleted.

Wednesday November 11, 2009

Church and class

Gather ye around the robust religious argument on the Front Porch. It all started when Jason Peters, who is an Orthodox convert, had vivid and unkind words to say about Evangelical megachurches. A commenter jumped in and told Peters he ought to be more charitable toward those he derides as "grocery story Christians":

So I would suggest that you don't let these "grocery store" Christians bother you. Some of them are from broken homes and broken hearts. Their children are oft raised by their mothers. Most of them are without benefit of a college education, many are hillwilliams, poor blacks, drug addicts and alcoholics and wouldn't fit in the company of more affluent folks, at least some affluent folks. I know this because these people are friends of mine. They are people that every once in a while, I've been privileged to help and people who have taught me more about being a Christian than any priest, preacher, or theologian. They may roll in the aisle, they may (God forbid) raise their hand in praise of the Almighty, they may shout "Praise Jesus", but please remember that every one of them truly believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Word, and the Savior of mankind. Not too bad for "grocery store" Christians!

Caleb Stegall jumped in to affirm this sentiment, then said the phenomenon Peters criticizes would be more accurately analyzed through class than theology. But that didn't happen ... and despite the fistfight that broke out, some interesting things got said anyway. Check it out. For the record, I think Caleb is onto something about class, but it's not a complete truth that megachurchers are all middles and upper-middles. Class is no longer defined exclusively by income, but sometimes by taste. Paul Fussell had this all figured out years ago, when he observed the emergence of Category X. You will find lots of Fussellian Christian Xers among intellectual Catholics, Orthodox converts, and certain mainline Protestant congregations. Basically, the Touchstone Magazine coalition. Not quite sure how many of them turn up in suburban megachurches ... which rub against their class grain, no matter how much money they make.

Monday November 9, 2009

"Dead" Catholics and "stupid" Protestants

I was at dinner last night with a fellow Orthodox Christian, a believer who came to Orthodoxy from Evangelicalism. He mentioned that it's striking to him how much residual anti-Catholicism still exists within some Orthodox converts from Evangelicalism. I thought...

Saturday October 24, 2009

A.N. Wilson: Goodbye, Church of England

Strong words from A.N. Wilson, the prominent Anglican revert, about Pope Benedict's overture to disaffected Anglican conservatives. Excerpts: The numbers of practicing Catholics in England is greater than the number of practicing Anglicans. Within a generation, there will probably be...

Thursday October 22, 2009

Pope Benedict's brilliant strategy

It took the last line of Vatican journalist Sandro Magister's analysis -- excerpted below -- to make the brilliance of Pope Benedict's outreach to Anglicans click with me: In any case, the communities that are ready to enter the Catholic...

Tuesday October 20, 2009

Anglican-Catholic confusion

News from the Vatican today makes it easier for fed-up Anglicans to convert to Catholicism without leaving everything behind. Excerpt: A new canonical entity will allow Anglicans "to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the...

Thursday October 15, 2009

Godless Europe vs. Godly America

The urbanist Joel Kotkin says Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win says a lot about the priorities of Europe -- they have no leaders of their own, so they're trying to co-opt one of ours they imagine thinks like them --...

Wednesday October 7, 2009

Remember Lepanto

Today is the anniversary of the 1517 1571 battle of Lepanto, in which the European Christian navy clashed with the Ottoman Turkish armada in a fight that would determine whether Western Europe remained Christian, or fell to the Turkish Islamic...

Saturday October 3, 2009

Megachurch vs. Orthodox church

It's am amazing thing to be reading the morning NYTimes and see a photo of your friends. But that's what happened today: here's a story about Protestants moving to Orthodoxy, focusing on Holy Cross Antiochan Orthodox Church in suburban Baltimore....

Thursday September 24, 2009

When a strict parent goes too far

Try to ignore The Nation's disgustingly prejudicial headline on this story, titled "The Nightmare of Christianity." Writers almost never write their own headlines, so it's not fair to blame Max Blumenthal for the words The Nation uses to introduce his...

Saturday September 5, 2009

Nicholas Winton and the saints

An extraordinary thing just happened in London. In 1939, Nicholas Winton, a Christian lawyer with Jewish roots, was working in the British Embassy in Prague, and anticipated that the Nazis were going to invade before long. He organized an evacuation...

Monday August 31, 2009

Can we be good without God?

That's the title of a 1989 Atlantic Monthly essay by the political scientist Glenn Tinder -- a piece one of this blog's readers recommended in a combox thread below. Many thanks to the reader -- I'd forgotten about this piece,...

Tuesday August 25, 2009

Fake Christian health care town halls

I just received an e-mail from the Family Research Council, offering a "kit" to help churches set up "health care townhalls." The mailer invites one to download the FRC's kit for staging a town hall. Excerpt from the cover letter:...

Monday August 24, 2009

Moralistic Therapeutic Jesuit

Oh, vom: St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, called this power we all have, the power to help people. Spirituality is something we grow with without even giving it a name, something that liberates our energies in life...

Sunday August 23, 2009

What does "monogamy" mean to gays?

The Lutherans (ELCA) have now okayed gay clergy who are in "committed" relationships, and endorsed "chaste, monogamous and lifelong" same-sex relationships. But as Terry Mattingly observes, there has been no real public discussion about just what "monogamy" means when it...

Wednesday August 19, 2009

"Christ-follower" vs. Christian

Take a look at this Mac vs. PC ad campaign from a Christian church: I get what they're trying to do, and I'm mildly sympathetic. Bumper-sticker Christianity drives me crazy too. But "Christian No More" as the name of this...

Friday August 14, 2009

Christian convert flees honor killing

ABC News reports on a teenage American girl who secretly converted to Christianity, and has fled her Muslim family's home to escape the prospect that she'll be murdered. Excerpt: Lorenz said Rifqa, a native of Sri Lanka, had secretly converted...

Tuesday August 11, 2009

Evangelicals should push early marriage

Sociologist Mark Regnerus, writing in Christianity Today, says the overwhelming majority of young conservative Evangelical adults are having some sort of sex: Virginity pledges. Chastity balls. Courtship. Side hugs. Guarding your heart. Evangelical discourse on sex is more conservative than...

Tuesday July 28, 2009

Burchill vs. Dawkins' atheist summer camp

How'd I miss this one? Richard Dawkins has given money toward the running of a summer camp for the young and godless. A letter-writer to the Times comments: Maybe Dawkins's atheist kiddy camps can educate these already overindulged middle-class children...

Wednesday July 22, 2009

The Sarum Rite

Speaking of Salisbury, have you ever heard of the Sarum Rite, a medieval liturgy developed for local use by the Diocese of Salisbury ("Sarum" to the Romans)? It was suppressed after the English Reformation, though celebrated privately by recusant Roman...

Monday July 20, 2009

Anger and Christian virtue

The other day I spoke on the phone to an Orthodox monk in connection with my Templeton project. We got to talking about martial arts, and he said he didn't think it was appropriate for Orthodox Christians to engage in...

Wednesday July 15, 2009

Fall and fallout (Erin)

Ever since Rod's post about Evangelical culture earlier this week, I've been pondering something. I'm going to be thinking out loud, here; hope you'll bear with me. Anyone who looks objectively at the state of Christianity today, particularly in America,...

Wednesday July 15, 2009

Wolf in shepherd's clothing (Erin)

Don't know if anyone's been following the trial of evangelist Tony Alamo; truly stomach churning stuff there: Alamo, 74, is accused of taking five girls across state lines for sex between 1994 and 2005. The woman did not testify about...

Wednesday July 15, 2009

No Christians need apply (Erin)

Marty Peretz at his TNR blog has noticed something strange about the reaction to President Obama's choice to lead the NIH: I don't know who's behind President Obama's appointment of Dr. Francis S. Collins as head of the National Institutes...

Tuesday July 14, 2009

Freedom, obedience and religious life

Here's an important blog post by Steve Skojec, a Catholic friend of this blog who posts from time to time, about what he learned from his traumatizing time in the Legionaries of Christ. It's about how personal autonomy yielded to...

Monday July 6, 2009

Was Neda a Christian?

Terry Mattingly has some shocking information (if true) about the icon of the ongoing Iranian unrest....

Friday June 19, 2009

Priest by day, drag queen by night

It seems that Ohio priest Father Anthony Capretta moonlights as a disco drag queen called Big Mama Capretta. Why anyone would think that this nitwit could offer serious spiritual direction is beyond me, but apparently some confused people do (check...

Tuesday June 16, 2009

Sex and poverty, morals and ministry

I had a couple of conversations in Cambridge that illuminated the challenges of being a Christian minister in this rapidly changing world. In the first, I spoke with an older Anglican priest (they're thick on the ground in Cambridge) who...

Monday June 15, 2009

Prayer and modern living (Erin)

Rod is very kindly letting me put up a post or so for the next couple of days; I'm glad, because I really enjoy getting to do this, and am frankly astonished by how fast these past two weeks have...

Tuesday June 9, 2009

St. Etheldreda

She was an early medieval East Anglian princess who became an abbess only after an extraordinary series of trials. See here. What an extraordinary story -- and she is a saint for the Orthodox too, of course. In fact, the...

Friday June 5, 2009

Leaning on the everlasting arms (Erin)

Somehow, I don't think that this is the right message to be sending in church: LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A Kentucky pastor is inviting his flock to bring guns to church to celebrate the Fourth of July and the Second...

Tuesday June 2, 2009

Lewis Episcopalians? (Erin)

In the thread about Tiller's church, a commenter wrote: Erin, please consider opening a new discussion thread on this topic: Back in the Seventies and Eighties, lots of people from an evangelical background, their faith much enriched by the writings...

Saturday May 30, 2009

An English church

Wandering around Cambridge this glorious afternoon, I stopped in at the tiny church of St. Edward King and Martyr, which was, they say, where the first sermon advocating the English Reformation was preached. From the church's website: The church played...

Tuesday May 26, 2009

The American Patriot's Bible

Hey nationalistic idolaters, there's now a Bible just for you. Excerpt from a critical Christianity Today review: Yet, the selective retelling of American history found in the Patriot's Bible is not what concerns me the most. What disturbs me more...

Thursday April 30, 2009

Christians and torture shocker

Here's a shocker: a new Pew poll finds that Christians support torture more than non-believers do. What's more, Evangelicals are more pro-torture than white mainline Protestants and white non-Hispanic Catholics -- but that Catholics and Evangelicals are more pro-torture than...

Thursday April 23, 2009

Jesus as Moralistic Therapeutic Deity

Andrew Sullivan reveals his next move: He says his next battle is to "turn Christianity against the fundamentalists". For him, "their certainty is the real blasphemy; their desire to control the lives of others the real heresy; their simple depiction...

Saturday April 18, 2009

Hey Truth, we're just not that into you

I was having lunch this week with a Christian friend, and we were discussing why the public Christian witness on critical issues is so weak and vacillating, and why the church, broadly speaking, is so accomodationist to this culture, so...

Friday April 17, 2009

Matt Baglio, exorcist hunter

Matt Baglio is a young American journalist living in Rome. When he heard of a California priest who had been sent to Rome by his bishop to learn how to be an exorcist, Baglio became intrigued. Why does the Catholic...

Wednesday April 15, 2009

Goodbye, good Bishop Nazir-Ali

The Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has guts, and more than that, he's a man of faith. That he felt he could serve more effectively by resigning his bishopric (he's going to work for the sake of the persecuted church) says...

Tuesday April 14, 2009

A.N. Wilson: I am once again a Christian

Last I heard from the British academic and critic A.N. Wilson, he had lost his Christian faith. Deo gratias, he has recovered it, and wrote a powerful Easter weekend testimonial to the necessity to be boldly Christian amid the sneering...

Monday April 13, 2009

Culture vs. true religion

Via Mark Shea, this fragment of an essay by a Jewish author lamenting the loss of Jews to intermarriage. The author began by citing a wedding, in a Catholic Church, of a young Jewish woman to a Catholic man: American...

Sunday April 12, 2009

Easter open thread

What was Easter like for you today at your church, and in your family? Open thread....

Friday April 10, 2009

"Crucify him!" I said

One of the most dramatic moments of any Catholic Christian's year is that moment in the Good Friday liturgy when, in the reading of the Passion, the entire congregation calls out, "Crucify him!" [Update: Reading this magnificent first chapter from...

Friday April 10, 2009

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism right for America?

Shocked, shocked to read that Damon Linker thinks that Christianity's decay into a wet-toilet-paper shell of itself called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is good for the country. Excerpt: Theologically speaking, this watered-down, anemic, insipid form of Judeo-Christianity is pretty repulsive....

Friday April 10, 2009

Shroud of Turin: Best relic ever

Jeffrey Hart says evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin as the burial cloth of the resurrected Christ is stronger than you might think. I've always found this point to be the most amazing thing about the Shroud:...

Thursday April 9, 2009

With Islam, 'respect' is a one-way street

I get so very tired of global Muslim whining about how they are disrespected. In some cases, I suppose, it's true, but I'd take these complaints a lot more seriously if Islamic countries busied themselves treating Christians and members of...

Wednesday April 8, 2009

Christians and the Red Cross torture report

Mark Danner's must-read piece about the damning meaning of the Red Cross torture report. Excerpt: When it comes to torture, it is not what we did but what we are doing. It is not what happened but what is happening...

Tuesday April 7, 2009

My Howard Ahmanson moment

For the second time in a week, I've had what I'll call a "Howard Ahmanson Moment" -- the feeling that I, as a cultural and religious conservative, have more in common with illegal aliens than with many of my own...

Sunday April 5, 2009

Knights Templar hid Shroud of Turin

So says the Vatican. Fascinating. I love anything about the Shroud, which I believe is real. I also love how at this time of year, you can hardly turn on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel without seeing a...

Sunday April 5, 2009

Meacham on post-Christian America

In the new issue of Newsweek, Jon Meacham explores the decline of Christianity as the animating spirit of American life. Excerpts: Let's be clear: while the percentage of Christians may be shrinking, rumors of the death of Christianity are greatly...

Friday April 3, 2009

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is eating the young

Got this just now from a reader who teaches at a Catholic college: I'm writing just to give a BIG "Amen" to your post on the challenges religious-social conservatives face in the future. I teach excerpts on MTD from Christian...

Thursday April 2, 2009

John Paul's new springtime

Amy Welborn notes that four years ago today (April 2), John Paul II died. She quotes a First Things essay by Fr. Thomas D. Williams, on why JP2's faith that we were entering a "new springtime" could not be seen...

Tuesday March 17, 2009

The real St. Patrick

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Aside from all the Irish blarney, the real-life story of St. Patrick is an incredible tale. Born into Roman Britain, he was captured at 16 by raiders, and taken to Ireland, where he was sold into...

Wednesday March 11, 2009

Meg's Attack Upon Christendom

In the "Collapse of Evangelicalism" below, a commenter named Meg, who identifies herself as a secular liberal, posted the following lengthy indictment of the Christianity in which she was raised. I don't agree with all of her points, for reasons...

Tuesday March 10, 2009

A coming Evangelical collapse?

Writing in today's Christian Science Monitor, Michael Spencer, an Evangelical, foresees an imminent collapse of Evangelical Christianity in the US. Excerpt: We are on the verge - within 10 years - of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown...

Thursday March 5, 2009

Are you a Christian hipster?

A friend passed along a link to this post, laying out a set of criteria for Christian hipsterness. Among them: Christian hipsters like music, movies, and books that are well-respected by their respective artistic communities--Christian or not. They love books...

Tuesday March 3, 2009

Diversity -- or else!

A reader writes to say that people on this blog often sneer at claims that Christians are being oppressed or discriminated against, but he brings to my attention a story from the UK that is undeniably an attempt to marginalize...

Tuesday March 3, 2009

Surprise! The Bible is, like, interesting

I must confess that I am a bad Bible reader. Really lousy. I rarely read it, and rarely have read it. This is inexplicable and indefensible from a Christian point of view. But that's where I am. As Slate editor...

Thursday February 26, 2009

Christian scientists speak out

In context of a discussion about growing Christian concern over climate change and environmental degredation, Mark I. Pinsky writes in the Harvard Divinity Journal about Christian scientists (that is, scientists who are Christians, not Mrs. Eddy's disciples) who are inspired...

Saturday February 21, 2009

No Christian philosophers need apply

Via Frank Beckwith, disturbing news about a petition academic philosophers are circulating among the American Philosophical Association membership. From the petition: Many colleges and universities require faculty, students, and staff to follow certain 'ethical' standards which prohibit engaging in homosexual...

Friday January 23, 2009

Sportsmanship and redemption

The other night in Dallas, a girls basketball team from the Covenant School stomped a mudhole in their opponents from Dallas Academy, beating them 100-0. The courage of the Dallas Academy girls in the face of their utter humiliation made...

Tuesday January 13, 2009

Tim Tebow is not the messiah

Gregg Doyel, who writes a sports column for CBS Online, says that Florida QB Tim Tebow might be the greatest college football player ever, but that Tebow's Christianity is not part of his greatness. Excerpt: This one is really going...

Tuesday January 6, 2009

Against spendthrift Christians

John Zmirak says credit-crazy Christians need to repent. Excerpt: We're facing a major meltdown of the economy after eight years of governance by the president whose base was--to put things baldly--orthodox Christians. Pro-lifers, patriots, hard-working types who aren't sitting by...

Monday December 29, 2008

Is heresy better than schism?

On his TNR blog, Damon Linker flags the schism withing the Episcopal Church as the most important and worrying religious development of the past year. Here's an excerpt: With 100,000 members, the schismatic Anglican denomination is so far quite small,...

Saturday December 27, 2008

Africa needs Jesus. America does too.

[Sorry for no posting -- Beliefnet's blogs have been down for two days. You probably noticed if you tried to post a comment. Should be fixed now.] Look at this extraordinary article from a Times of London columnist: But travelling...

Sunday December 14, 2008

A nice place to visit? (Erin)

I'm so glad the Drehers have made it back safely--there's no misery quite like being sick while on vacation. Rod has graciously invited me to continue posting today, and as there are one or two little things of interest out...

Friday December 5, 2008

The spirit of silence (Erin)

Erin Manning here; starting sometime this weekend, I'll be taking the helm of the good ship Crunchy Con so our captain can enjoy some still waters for a change, in conjunction with what he wrote about today, below. One of...

Thursday November 20, 2008

Kill a Christian, earn $250

In India, Hindu extremists are paying people to bounty-hunt Christians. Excerpt: Extremist Hindu groups offered money, food and alcohol to mobs to kill Christians and destroy their homes, according to Christian aid workers in the eastern state of Orissa. The...

Tuesday September 30, 2008

Alinsky: "Bishop or priest? Choose."

I decided over the weekend to pick up and read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," to gain more insight into Barack Obama's mindset and methods. Obama trained under and worked for followers of the Chicago community organizer, who died in...

Saturday September 27, 2008

Church, power and authority

In the Bishop Soto thread below, a discussion has broken out about the relationship between the personal credibility of a church leader (in this case, a bishop) and the authority they exercise by virtue of their office. It's a complex...

Saturday August 30, 2008

What kind of Christian is Sarah Palin?

It's hard to say. People say she's an Evangelical, but what does that mean, really? Is she a Pentecostal? A Bible churcher? Christianity Today reports that she was baptized a Catholic as an infant, but her parents raised her in...

Saturday August 30, 2008

Anti-Christian pogroms in Orissa

In India's Orissa state, Hindu mobs have been burning churches, gang-raping nuns and murdering Christians in recent days. Here's a blog that's compiling news about the pogroms, the details of which are utterly horrifying. For example, Catholic News Service reports:...

Thursday August 7, 2008

Solzhenitsyn: Apocalypse now

From Solzhenitsyn's 1983 Templeton Lecture, reprinted in "The Solzhenitsyn Reader", this protest against the metaphysical calamity modernity has brought to both the communist East and the capitalist West: Today's world has reached a stage that, if it had been described...

Thursday August 7, 2008

Solzhenitsyn: "The Soul & Barbed Wire"

Last night I was looking on the bookshelf in my dining room for something to read at bedtime, and saw a blank spine in a far corner. I pulled it out, and it was a galley copy of "The Soul...

Wednesday August 6, 2008

Ecumenism in our time

Slightly hysterical Muslim woman gets up in Christian street preacher's face, grabs at his Bible. Christian street preacher calls Muhammad a pedophile. Muslim woman slugs him hard. It's all here on video (the punch is at the 1:30 point). What...

Friday August 1, 2008

What do converts want?

I've listened twice now to a great lecture by Terry Mattingly, delivered a couple of years ago to an audience of Orthodox priests and laymen. It's title: "So What Do the Converts Want?" It's about and meant for Orthodox believers,...

Monday July 21, 2008

Saints and signs

Last week for some reason I decided to pull a biography of St. Silouan the Athonite off the pile of books by my bed, where it had been sitting since November, and start reading it. It's really captivating. And since...

Friday July 18, 2008

Put down that book and pray

The Orthodox priest Fr. Stephen Freeman's blog really is a wonder. If you want to get an idea of the blog's spirit, consider this recent excerpt: Thus, most of my writing is aimed towards the goal of our salvation in...

Friday July 18, 2008

Humility, mercy and St. Silouan

A passage from the biography of St. Silouan the Athonite, a 20th century monk, by Archimandrite Sophrony: The Staretz [Holy Elder] used to say, "The Holy Spirit is love, and He gives the soul strength to love her enemies. And...

Friday July 18, 2008

The last word on P.Z. Myers

Did you know that according to Nature magazine, Myers' blog is the No. 1 science blog out there? He's not the fringe figure one might think (or wish). Anyway, Mark Shea has, to my mind, the last word on that...

Monday July 14, 2008

P.Z. Myers hates Christians exclusively

Or so it would seem, per this discovery by Frank Beckwith, who found that Myers criticized the Danish newspapers for publishing the Muhammad cartoons. Here's part of what Myers said at the time: Muslims represent a poor and oppressed underclass,...

Sunday June 22, 2008

[Erin] The habit of worship

In a little while, my family and I will be attending Mass. As Catholics we take the obligation to go to Mass on Sundays and on Holy Days of Obligation very seriously. Catholics are required to go to Mass on...

Friday June 20, 2008

[Erin] Schism, or no?

Time is asking the question: are the Anglicans about to split? The schism long forecast for the Anglican Communion over the church's liberal stand on homosexuality may be getting closer. A document released by a group of conservative churchmen called...

Thursday June 12, 2008

Bishop Bennison on trial

An extraordinary, and welcome, event underway today in Philadelphia: the Episcopal Church is conducting a canonical trial of Charles Bennison, the Bishop of Pennsylvania, over his role in covering up sexual abuse. Excerpt from a Phila Daily News column: Bennison...

Sunday May 18, 2008

Narcissism and the church

My friend N., the former Catholic priest, and I have continued our conversation via e-mail. From a letter I received from him today, blogged here with his permission: I've been giving this some thought all weekend. Clericalism is not the...

Sunday May 11, 2008

Gledhill: "Soul of Britain is dying"

Ruth Gledhill, the religion writer for the Times of London, says "it feels like the soul of Britain is dying." What's she talking about? A new report projecting further astonishing collapse in British Christianity. An excerpt from Gledhill's article: Church...

Wednesday April 23, 2008

The good that priests do

Tonight I went to the Holy Unction service at the cathedral, and to confession. After my confession, as I stood on the other side of the church listening to the chanting and praying, and watched Father John receive more of...

Wednesday April 23, 2008

Religious freedom in Russia

The good news is that Russian Orthodoxy is rising in the formerly atheist dystopia of Russia. The bad news? The Russian government is persecuting Protestants and Catholics in an effort to protect Orthodoxy. This is wrong. Look, I understand why...

Sunday April 20, 2008

UK: Religion is a modern evil

A new British poll finds that the people of the UK identify religion as one of the worst social evils of our time. This made some Brits happy: Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said he was “extremely...

Monday April 14, 2008

Same church, different worlds

I've been at the hospital most of the day with Matthew as he underwent a lengthy diagnostic procedure. No fun for anybody. The boy was well taken care of by a nice nurse who, as it turns out, is a...

Sunday April 6, 2008

The amazing Mennonites. Again.

Once again, Mennonites in the news exhibiting the virtue of forgiveness at a level that passes all human understanding. Excerpt: CHEWELAH, Wash. — For more than a quarter mile, Clifford Helm veered in his pickup truck through a grassy median...

Tuesday April 1, 2008

The tragically hip vicar

Mark Shea says there's nothing more painful than a tragically hip Anglican. This is the poor boob he's talking about: An Anglican vicar has tried to make Bible stories more “accessible” to modern readers by rewriting them to portray Goliath...

Saturday March 29, 2008

Miss Emily Litellavskaya

From the Miss Emily Litella File, remember the reports that Mikhail Gorbachev has embraced Christianity? Gorby says, "Never mind."...

Friday March 28, 2008

The amazing Fr. Zakaria Botros

Check out this NRO piece on Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest who's making big waves in the Arab Muslim world with his television broadcasts on Arabic-language television. Excerpts: A third reason for Botros’s success is that his polemical technique has...

Tuesday March 25, 2008

Church of Jesus Without Jesus

Quick, observe these daft divines before they fade away five minutes from now: That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today – Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto's West Hill United Church as...

Tuesday March 25, 2008

Allam and Benedict: two mustard seeds

Remember when Ronald Reagan came on the national scene, he was thought to be a dangerous man because he didn't believe in detente with the Soviets, but actually thought his vision was true, the Soviet vision false, and ought to...

Saturday March 22, 2008

Christ is Risen (in the West)!

Easter blessings to all Western Christians on this feast of feasts! Tonight brings wonderful news from Rome. Let all Christians welcome our new brother in Christ, Magdi Allam: VATICAN CITY - Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned...

Saturday March 22, 2008

"...a circle is closing..."

From "The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983": Holy [Good] Friday, April 8, 1977 Everything as it should be -- as always -- on these high days. In the best moments, one is painfully pierced by what is remembered and...

Thursday March 20, 2008

Triduum open thread

Today is Holy Thursday. We are at the Easter Triduum for Christians of the West. I wish you all a blessed one, and would like to offer this post as an open thread for reflections on the meaning of these...

Wednesday March 19, 2008

Bible Girl on Jeremiah Wright

This is one I've been waiting for: Bible Girl's take on the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Bible Girl is Julie Lyons, until recently the editor of the Dallas Observer, and a Pentecostal who has for years worshiped in a black church....

Wednesday March 19, 2008

Mikhail Gorbachev: Christian

Wow. And Reagan believed during negotiations with him that Gorbachev was a "closet believer." According to this report, it sounds like he's a Catholic, though baptized Orthodox: Mr Gorbachev's parents reportedly kept Orthodox icons hidden behind pictures of Stalin and...

Saturday February 23, 2008

Apostolicity in our time

A message to the people of God from Relevant Church of Ybor City, Fla.: People are not having enough sex. An epidemic of breakups prove the needs that lead to a great sex life are being overlooked. Dirty dishes, frumpy...

Friday February 8, 2008

John The Anonymous Christian

Stop whatever you're doing and go right now to read Michael Brendan Dougherty's story of John the Anonymous Christian. (What is an Anonymous Christian? Glad you asked.) When you've finished reading Mike's amazing piece, reflect on it in light of...

Friday February 8, 2008

To pass on the faith, live it

Along the lines of the Buckaroo Banzai Christians post, here's something Catholic blogger Amy Welborn said in a recent interview that bears repeating: The problem is that when you look at Catholic history, the faith has never been passed on...

Wednesday February 6, 2008

The Gay Priest problem

Well, it is Ash Wednesday, so let's talk about something difficult, something that requires penitential self-examination. Father Neuhaus calls "The Faithful Departed" by Phil Lawler "the best book-length treatment of the [Catholic] sex abuse crisis, its origins and larger implications,...

Sunday February 3, 2008

Nietzsche on Christianity

I commend to those who despise Christianity and think it a detriment to a culture based on its moral precepts this passage from leading Nietzsche scholar Rudiger Safranski's "Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography" (2002): Nature produces the weak and the strong,...

Tuesday January 29, 2008

The new (Evangelical) monastics

The Los Angeles Times profiles young Evangelicals who, having grown weary of soft, suburbanized Christianity, have chosen to live monastically, in community with each other. Here's how the story begins: BILLINGS, MONT. -- In a peeling house on South 32nd...

Thursday January 24, 2008

Baptists? Who, us?

Here's an interesting question submitted to an advice column in a newsmagazine for Texas Baptists: Our church is talking seriously about sponsoring a new congregation in our area. But we seem headed for a meltdown. Several folks insist “Baptist” must...

Tuesday January 15, 2008

Obama's liberal Christianity

I'm getting the revolting e-mails in which Barack Obama is smeared as a Muslim (not, I hasten to point out, that being a Muslim is something to be ashamed of, but his alleged secret Muslim identity is used to smear...

Thursday December 27, 2007

See how they love each other

O little town of Bethlehem/How your priests beat the crap out of each other in church... Seven people were injured on Thursday when Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests came to blows in a dispute over how to clean the Church...

Thursday December 20, 2007

Alas, poor Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury assures BBC listeners and Ricky Gervais that a lot of the Nativity story is more or less myth. Well, Rowan, good to know. To be fair, if you read the entire transcript of the interview, the...

Monday November 19, 2007

[Erin] A line in the sand

At their convention this past weekend, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth took the first steps necessary to allow them to withdraw from the national church, in a split motivated in part by the ECUSA's teachings on the morality of...

Monday November 5, 2007

Working the vertex for Regnum Christi

I hadn't realized that "Bella" is not just being promoted by the orthodox Catholic organization Regnum Christi (the lay arm of the Legion of Christ, which has had its share of problems re: accusations of cult-like behavior, as well as...

Monday October 22, 2007

Ecclesiastical follies

You know, all the Catholic Church needs to do to take care of its child molestation problem is get married priests and women priests, like the Anglicans. And liberalize its theology, like the Anglicans. Oh, wait... Meanwhile, the financial scandal...

Thursday October 11, 2007

St. Charles Lwanga and African homosexuality

Philip Jenkins has a great piece up on The New Republic site explaining why homosexuality is such a big deal for African Christians, especially Nigeria's Anglicans. I knew that it was vitally important in Christianity's rivalry with Islam, as Jenkins...

Friday September 28, 2007

Pentecostalism and the Global South

I spent an hour late yesterday interviewing Josiah Idowu-Fearon, the Anglican Archbishop of Kaduna state in Nigeria. He's in Dallas for the next few days preaching and teaching. We talked about all kinds of things, in particular the Anglican split...

Wednesday September 26, 2007

Feminized Christianity, anyone?

We've been talking about whether or not western Christianity has become or is becoming feminized. Along those lines, BabyBlue, an Episcopalian attending TEC's bishops' meeting in New Orleans, picked up one of the new "official" hymns being trilled by the...

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About Crunchy Con

Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

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