We wondered what kind of reading ministers rely on for inspiration or help in preaching—apart from reading commentaries on scripture or other materials directly related to the task. Do they draw on certain authors of fiction or nonfiction? Are they influenced by essays, poetry, magazines or children’s literature? Here are some reflections

Read them all (eight in all).

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • Preaching / Homiletics • * Culture-Watch • Media • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture

It is a matter of deep regret that some of those with knowledge of the fact of and the substance of the complaints against me have repeatedly chosen to leak information, much of it partial and inaccurate, during the formal legal process.

Apart from an admission by Lambeth Palace in November 2011 of a leak to a journalist by a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s staff, the source of the leaks has not been identified amongst the small group privy to the relevant information. After November 2011, the leaks did not stop. This has led to repeatedly unfair media reporting, in circumstances where, on advice, I have been unable publicly to defend myself.

The media coverage during the process did not escape the attention of Lord Justice Mummery. With the process complete, I can now quote from Lord Justice Mummery’s decision letter dated 29 January 2013 addressed to Mr Akerman and Mr Perkins by which he refused to allow the bulk of their complaints to proceed. He said this, under the heading “Coverage in the media”:

“I should add that this letter is sent only to the persons directly concerned with its contents. It is an impartial judgment on disciplinary matters. It is made by an independent judge. The decision is based on a full and careful consideration of the relevant evidence submitted and the legal arguments advanced.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

"It has been said that preachers should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. However, Carol Howard Merritt and Derrick Weston are more likely to read the Bible on their iPhones with Google News open in a computer browser window. As young pastors in a historic mainline Christian denomination, the partners of God Complex Radio are determined to lead Christianity into the 21st century and translate the values of the Christian faith to the next generation.

Through the production of a podcast and the development of media, join Carol and Derrick as they welcome writers, speakers, thinkers, musicians, and poets who are (and are destined to become) the voices of the next generation of the faith."

Check it out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • Religion & Culture

After 87 years, the University Baptist Church of Coral Gables, Fla., recently shed its name for something it felt was more forward looking - Christ Journey.

It was following the lede of First Baptist Church of Perrine, Fla., which dropped the name it had held for 89 years in favor of Christ Fellowship.

Coral Baptist Church of Coral Springs, Fla., relaunched itself in 2006 as Church By the Glades.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists

They come in all shapes and sizes, claiming a dizzying variety of capabilities. They date back decades, or just a year or two. And when you think there couldn’t possibly be much more than 50 marketing agencies in this relatively small town, another one seems to pop up.

Public relations, advertising, web marketing, however you want to “brand” it, digital media is a growth industry in 2013 Charleston.

While not entirely new, the prevalence of do-it-all media shops is becoming hard to miss. What’s behind the message machine?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • * South Carolina • * Theology

My team at Cooke Pictures gets hired when a church, ministry or nonprofit organization is losing its voice. Perhaps you’ve experienced a similar situation: Despite doing great work in the community—like building homeless shelters, drug treatment centers or food banks—your ministry still lives hand to mouth. Or, as a pastor who has had a genuine calling, you’ve built a great team, invested your life in the vision with powerful preaching, teaching or ministry, but the spark never happens; growth never takes off. Or it just suddenly stops.

I see it happen all too often: media ministries that just can’t seem to grow beyond a local broadcast; churches that hit an attendance plateau; benevolent outreaches that can’t seem to break through a certain level of fundraising. In most cases, these efforts are led by qualified, sincere men and women, and almost all have a strong vision for excellence. They spend money on capital campaigns, media equipment, church-growth consultants, marketing, TV or radio time, advertising, social media campaigns and more, but they just seem trapped and unable to grow beyond a certain point....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Aanglican Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, Rt Rev Dr Howard Gregory, is suggesting that the media have more to offer.

"While we expect the media to be truthful in reflecting what is happening in our midst, I submit that the journalistic community has a significant role to play in the shaping of our society," he said. Gregory said the view that media only reflect what is going on is a cop-out.

"If the journalistic community is simply going to reflect the dynamics and values of society, then we are in deep trouble." Speaking at the World Press Freedom Day Forum at The Knutsford Court Hotel on Thursday, Bishop Gregory said a spirit of individualism is permeating societies and institutions of governance and commerce are taking more control over citizens' lives. He said there seems to be no exploration of the values which are informing the decisions being made and the extent they influence society's choices.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Caribbean • Jamaica • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Ven. Leslie Stevenson, who was to have been consecrated this week as Bishop of Meath & Kildare, in the Irish Republic, withdrew on Sunday after a press campaign against him.

His decision to step aside followed two newspaper articles. One in the Dublin-based Sunday Business Post noted that he would be the first divorced bishop in the history of the Church of Ireland, and that he had had a relationship after his first marriage failed.

The second appeared last Friday in the Belfast-based Nationalist daily Irish News, which suggested that Archdeacon Stevenson's consecration was in doubt. It named the woman with whom he had had a relationship, who is now a serving priest in the diocese of Connor.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of Ireland • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • --Ireland • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

Churches and Christians are being urged to mark Sunday 12th May 2013 as a special day of prayer for the media – and to contact their local newspaper, radio and TV station to find out what they would like prayer for.

The call comes from Christian charity the Church and Media Network which works to promote links between the church and the media.

The Day of Prayer is being supported by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu and the Bishop of Bradford, Nick Baines, who have both provided prayers for the event.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Christian Life / Church Life • Spirituality/Prayer • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture

Security experts at Twitter were fighting a seemingly losing battle yesterday against the Syrian Electronic Army, a shadowy group that sparked panic on financial markets this week by faking a news report about an bomb attack on the White House.

The group, which purports to support the regime in Damascus, hacked the Associated Press news agency’s Twitter account and reported that explosions in the White House had injured President Obama, sending markets into a tailspin, and wiping $136 billion (£89 billion) off the [value of the top 500 U.S. stocks in seconds]....

Read it all (requires subscription) and there is a lot more there from the WSJ.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Syria

We’d been learning so much about how the Tsarnaev brothers became more interested in radical Islam. I was curious about the spouse’s religious background and was fascinated to learn she “grew up Christian.” I know that can mean about a million different things so I read the story looking forward to additional details.

But those three words in the lede are all we have. I’d love even to know how we know this. She “grew up Christian” according to whom? I’d read elsewhere on the internet that she in fact hadn’t grown up in a family that was religious. It had better sourcing than this story but came from a site that is outside mainstream media.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam

The word on the Brooklyn streets in 1959 was that a crazy preacher from Pennsylvania was helping addicts find the power to kick heroin and gang members to trade their weapons for Bibles. — Reporter John McCandlish Phillips heard the talk in local churches and took the tip to his metro editors at The New York Times. This was more than a religion story, he argued. This was something truly new in urban ministry in a rough corner of the city.

The editors just didn't get it.

"The New York Times could not see ... validity of this approach to any issue as serious as addiction. Editors said, 'You can't put a few religious ideas up against something as real as addiction and expect any results,' " said Phillips, in a 2000 interview in Riverside Park.

The young preacher was David Wilkerson, whose story would eventually be told in the best seller "The Cross and the Switchblade."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

While a number of lawsuits between dioceses and parishes have gone to state supreme courts, with the diocese prevailing in many of them, in South Carolina the state supreme court ruled the other way and held the church’s national property rules, called the Dennis Canon, were of no legal effect in South Carolina. In other words, if a parish has clear title to its property in South Carolina, it can take it with it if it leaves its diocese or denomination. Omitting this crucial legal precedent in the story was most unfortunate.

It should also be added that the appellate courts have not adjudicated the issue of whether a diocese may withdraw from the national church. Attorneys for the national church have argued the legal precedents from outside South Carolina governing the relationship of the parish to the diocese should govern the relationship of the diocese to the national church. The diocese’s lawyers in South Carolina have argued this relationship is not comparable.

One might also add, contrary to the assertion in the article about declining membership, that until these lawsuits erupted the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina was one of the few Episcopal diocese to see a growth in membership over the past decade.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • TEC Polity & Canons • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Media • * South Carolina

Pat Summerall was the calm alongside John Madden’s storm.

Over four decades, Summerall described some of the biggest games in America in his deep, resonant voice. Simple, spare, he delivered the details on 16 Super Bowls, the Masters and the U.S. Open tennis tournament with a simple, understated style that was the perfect complement for the “booms!” and “bangs!” of Madden, his football partner for the last half of the NFL player-turned-broadcaster’s career.

Summerall died Tuesday at age 82 of cardiac arrest, said University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center spokesman Jeff Carlton, speaking on behalf of Summerall’s wife, Cheri.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Media • Sports

“Leading the conversation” is how you end up with the major Sunday shows somehow neglecting to invite a single anti-amnesty politician on a weekend dominated by the immigration debate. It’s how you end up with officially nonideological anchors and journalists lecturing social conservatives for being out of step with modern values. And it’s how you end up with a press corps that went all-in for the supposed “war on women” having to be shamed and harassed — by two writers in particular, Kirsten Powers in USA Today and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway of GetReligion — into paying attention to the grisly case of a Philadelphia doctor whose methods of late-term abortion included snipping the spines of neonates after they were delivered.

As the last example suggests, the problem here isn’t that American journalists are too quick to go on crusades. Rather, it’s that the press’s ideological blinders limit the kinds of crusades mainstream outlets are willing to entertain, and the formal commitment to neutrality encourages self-deception about what counts as crusading.

The core weakness of the mainstream media, in this sense, is less liberalism than parochialism....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Media • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Politics in General

Late in 2011, Michiko Kakutani opened her New York Times review of Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens with “a remarkable account” she had found in its pages. In London for a few days in 1862, Fyodor Dostoevsky had dropped in on Dickens’s editorial offices and found the writer in an expansive mood....

I have been teaching courses on Dostoevsky for over two decades, but I had never come across any mention of this encounter. Although Dostoevsky is known to have visited London for a week in 1862, neither his published letters nor any of the numerous biographies contain any hint of such a meeting. Dostoevsky would have been a virtual unknown to Dickens. It isn’t clear why Dickens would have opened up to his Russian colleague in this manner, and even if he had wanted to, in what language would the two men have conversed? (It could only have been French, which should lead one to wonder about the eloquence of a remembered remark filtered through two foreign tongues.) Moreover, Dostoevsky was a prickly, often rude interlocutor. He and Turgenev hated each other. He never even met Tolstoy. Would he have sought Dickens out? Would he then have been silent about the encounter for so many years, when it would have provided such wonderful fodder for his polemical journalism?

Several American professors of Russian literature wrote to the New York Times in protest, and eventually a half-hearted online retraction was made, informing readers that the authenticity of the encounter had been called into question, but in the meantime a second review of Tomalin’s biography had appeared in the Times, citing the same passage....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Education • History • Media • Poetry & Literature • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Russia • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Almost a month on from the election of the first Latin American pontiff, the head of the Vatican’s Council for Social Communications says Pope Francis is pioneering new ways of sharing the faith with people in and outside the Christian Church.

Archbishop Claudio Celli travelled to Santiago del Chile at the weekend for a conference on the challenges and opportunities facing the Church in Latin America in our era of rapidly developing digital technologies. The conference, which opens on Monday at the Catholic University of Chile, brings together some 400 communications specialists from across the continent.

At the heart of the discussion, Archbishop Celli says, lies not just the question of how to use the new technologies, but rather of how to bring the Word of Christ to men and women living in an increasingly digitalized world. The new Pope, he says, is already showing us an innovative approach to communicating that Gospel message…

Read and listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Globalization • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

The Dean of Durham, the Very Revd Michael Sadgrove, has welcomed a statement issued by the new manager of Sunderland Football Club, Paolo Di Canio, on Wednesday, saying that he does "not support the ideology of fascism".

Dean Sadgrove wrote an open letter to Mr Di Canio on Tuesday, seeking clarification whether he held fascist beliefs. Mr Di Canio, whose appointment as Sunderland manager was announced on Sunday evening, gave a straight-arm salute more than once when he was a player, and said in his autobiography that he was "fascinated by Mussolini".

The former Foreign Secretary David Miliband resigned from the board of Sunderland FC because of "past political statements" made by Mr Di Canio.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • Sports • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Italy • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The New York Times has been taking quite a bit of heat for its shockingly erroneous understanding of Christianity. Earlier this week, it published a brief story about Pope Francis’ Easter message and went on to say that “Easter is the celebration of the resurrection into heaven of Jesus, three days after he was crucified, the premise for the Christian belief in an everlasting life.”

Now, there are many things wrong with that line, as my kindergartner could tell you.

I thought my write-up of the piece was pretty mild...[but a number of others disagreed]....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Easter • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Someone apparently hacked into the Emergency Alert System and announced on KRTV and the CW that "dead bodies are rising from their graves" in several Montana counties.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Science & Technology • * General Interest • Humor / Trivia

Our news media suffer from a terrible supply-side problem. The number of people paid to offer opinions greatly outstrips the number of things worth having an opinion about. Even now, several weeks after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, I don’t think the slaughter was the kind of event toward which one can profitably form an interesting point of view. Leaving church one morning, so the story goes, the great Coolidge was asked the subject of his pastor’s sermon. “Sin,” Coolidge replied. And what did the pastor say about sin? “He said he was ag’in it.” Some things don’t require much elaboration.

In an important sense—in the literal sense—what happened at Sandy Hook was unspeakable, which is why, I suppose, the public disputations that followed it were a towering jumble of non sequitur and irrelevance, a rodeo of hobby horses ridden by straw men. The disputations began even before the authorities had released a final count of victims. Indeed, at the time, good information was hard to come by. For as much as 10 hours after the first reporters arrived on the scene, print and TV journalists were misreporting the killer’s name, his place of residence, his relationship to the elementary school, his mother’s line of work, the types and source of the guns he used, the reaction of school officials in the immediate aftermath of the crime—the long string of mistakes we have come to expect when the compulsion to get it first overwhelms the need to get it right.

The slaughter at Sandy Hook wasn't merely a rebuke to politics or law enforcement or government regulation--it was a rebuke to our desperate hope that evil can be destroyed, or at least quarantined.

--From the February 2013 issue of Commentary, pages 63-64

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Media • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theodicy

Many psychological tests have the so-called “lie-scale.” A small but sufficient number of questions that admit only one true answer, such as: “Do you always reply to letters immediately after reading them?” are
inserted among others that are central to the particular test. A wrong reply for such a question adds a point on the lie-scale, and when the lie-score is high, the over-all test results are discarded as unreliable. Perhaps, for a scientist the best candidate for such a lie-scale is the question: “Do you read all of the papers that you cite?”

Comparative studies of the popularity of scientific papers has been a subject of much recent interest [1–8], but the scope has been limited to citation distribution analysis. We have discovered a method of estimating
what percentage of people who cited the paper had actually read it.

The title of the paper is "Read Before You Cite!" No fair clicking the link until you have guessed, then check out their argument--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Books • Education • Media • Psychology • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

1 Kings 18:21 describes a crucial moment of decision. It's the final showdown between the God of Israel and a false god called Baal. Elijah calls God's people to choose once and for all between the living God who delivered them, and this false god who has captured their affections: "'How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.' But the people said nothing."

They seem unable, or unwilling, to make a choice. They want to hedge their bets, sit on the fence, and keep their options open. How different are we Christians in the 21st century? Would you prefer to make an ironclad, no-turning-back choice, or one you could back out of if need be? Do you ever find that you're afraid to commit? Do you reply to party invitations with a "maybe" rather than a "yes" or "no"? Do you like to keep your smartphone switched on at all times, even in meetings, so that you are never fully present at any given moment? Will you focus on the person you're talking to after a church service, or will you look over her shoulder for a better conversation partner?

If so, you may be worshiping the god of open options.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Movies & Television • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

This Bill, for the first time in British history, fundamentally seeks to break the existing legal link between the institution of marriage and sexual exclusivity, loyalty, and responsibility for the children of the marriage. If the Bill passes, several previously foundational aspects of the law of marriage will be changed to accommodate same sex
couples: the common law presumption that a child born to a mother during her marriage is also the child of her partner will not apply in same sex marriages (Schedule 4, para. 2); the existing provisions on divorce will be altered so that sexual infidelity by one of the parties in a same sex marriage with another same sex partner will not constitute adultery (Schedule 4, para. 3); and nonconsummation will not be a ground on which a same sex marriage is voidable (Schedule 4, para. 4).

Marriage thus becomes an institution in which openness to children, and with it the responsibility on fathers and mothers to remain together to care for children born into their family unit, is no longer central to society’s understanding of that institution (as reflected in the law). The fundamental problem with the Bill is that changing the legal understanding of marriage to accommodate same sex partnerships threatens subtly, but radically, to alter the meaning of marriage over time for everyone. This is the heart of our argument in principle against same sex marriage....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Church/State Matters • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • --Wales • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

My question for you, kind GetReligion readers, is this: Did the newspaper reports bury the lede? Rather than sales figures and charity donations, is the bigger story here that two humans got together and found common ground? Or am I naive to expect that such dialogue might make headlines?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * Religion News & Commentary • Sexuality Debate (Other denominations and faiths)

One scholar says it's impossible to understand American history without an understanding of the nation's Christian history. Another suggests that it can lead to church renewal. A third says it helps us interpret Scripture, shape our mission, and appreciate God's grace. People of Faith serves most of these needs well.

The series—produced by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College (Illinois), with support from the Lilly Endowment—shows Christians engaged in public life during the European settlement, the founding of the nation, the Civil War, the 19th-century social reform movements, and the civil rights movement. Christian activity is portrayed as predominantly positive, though not entirely so. For example, the series points out that Christians made arguments both for and against slavery, and that Prohibition began as a public health crusade against a devastating social problem but quickly turned punitive and counterproductive. Subjects that Christians got mostly wrong, notably the treatment of Native Americans, are touched on lightly, if at all.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • Parish Ministry • Adult Education • * Culture-Watch • Education • History • Media • Movies & Television • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * Theology

...surely some things should be left to the imagination? The ancient Greeks knew the meaning of the word “obscene” and obscene acts – castrations, rapes, beheadings and the like – were not depicted in the theatre, but had to be imagined as having taken place offstage, the literal meaning of “obscene.”

Unfortunately for us, we live in the age of blatancy. Everything must be seen in all its disgusting horror or squalor – and usually both. We have been taught since Freud to think that this is somehow good for us. But all it has done is corrupt our morality and obliterate our powers of imagination. We live in an age where every image is an advert. Now I’ve gone and said it: we have forgotten the prohibition on the making and worshipping of images.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • Movies & Television • Religion & Culture • Theatre/Drama/Plays • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology • Theodicy

Two new monthly publications, specifically designed for Church of England parishes, have been posted online on the Church's website.

In Review and In Focus concentrate on the work of the national Church. The front pages of both first editions feature news of the Confirmation of Election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the parliamentary launch of the national Lent campaign, "Love Life Live Lent" by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Culture-Watch • Media

The only time my fondness for [New York Times columnist Gail] Collins takes a hit is when she writes about abortion, and not only because we disagree. On that subject I find she writes, like so many other progressives, as though there are no difficult questions left, and support for unrestricted access to abortion is the only decent position a right-thinking, non-woman-hating person can hold. Obviously I’m a bit insulted by that approach. But I’m also disappointed whenever I encounter it. It doesn’t sound like an earnest attempt to grapple with a tough issue; it sounds to me like an attempt to convince oneself that there is no more thinking to be done. Coming from either side, self-satisfied absolutism is a dead end.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Check it out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

When I started reading the coverage, I wanted to know if the teams in our major newsrooms realized that this symbolic action was a typical Episcopal-Anglican story, one with implications at the local, national and global levels. I also wondered if journalists would consider the ecumenical impact of this decision, in terms of the cathedral’s relationships with larger bodies of American believers — such as Catholics, evangelicals, charismatics, etc. Who knows, there was even a chance that journalists might interview one or two important religious leaders who opposed this action.

Hey, it could happen.

But don’t hold your breath.

Read it all and follow the links.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Theology • Anthropology • Theology: Scripture

...for the past 24 years I have edited Image, a journal that publishes literature and art concerned with the faith traditions of the West. Our instinct when launching the publication was that the narrative of decline was misguided, but we honestly didn't know if we could fill more than a few issues.

Sometimes when you look, you find. Over the years Image has featured many believing writers, including Annie Dillard, Elie Wiesel, Christian Wiman, Marilynne Robinson and Mark Helprin. But these writers of religious faith and others are not hard to find elsewhere. Several prominent American authors—Franz Wright, Mary Karr and Robert Clark—are Catholic converts. Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer last year published "New American Haggadah," a contemporary take on the ritual book used by Jews on Passover.

In short, the myth of secularism triumphant in the literary arts is just that—a myth. Yet making lists of counterexamples does not get at a deeper matter. It has to do with the way that faith takes on different tones and dimensions depending on the culture surrounding it.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Secularism

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

If you have not seen this material, you need to. Read it all (16 page pdf).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * South Carolina

The Church of England today released figures for its Christmas Twitter campaign #ChristmasStartsWithChrist.

Launched in November 2012, congregations and clergy in the 12,500 parishes of the Church of England were encouraged to get out their smartphones and livetweet the joy and meaning of Christmas in a series of 140 character messages to the 10 million people who make up the UK's 'Twitterati'.

Churches from across the country took part in the campaign, tweeting their sermons using the hashtag "#ChristmasStartsWithChrist" to share their Christmas messages. Figures revealed today show almost 9,000 tweets sent using the hashtags "#ChristmasStartsWithChrist" and "#CSWC" with peak traffic occurring on Christmas Day at around 11am (GMT) and a smaller peak on Christmas Eve at 11pm (GMT).

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

This being the Ephiphany, churchgoing Anglicans will be on the receiving end of any variety of sermons on the visit by the three kings to the infant Christ. There won’t, by and large, then, be much attention given to the whole issue of gay bishops. No attention at all, probably.

You’d never think it, though, judging from the broadcast and press reaction to the news. On the Radio 4 Today programme yesterday, the presenter said sternly to one conservative Anglican, Norman Russell, the Archdeacon of Oxford, that the fuss over the issue of gay bishops just goes to show why people are turned off by the church: it can only ever think about sex. The archdeacon replied mildly that this wasn’t quite the case: the church did talk about other things.

Russell could have made a stronger case. He could have said, nope, it’s not the church that’s obsessed by sex; it’s journalists. The only reason why it feels like the church spends its time arguing about sex and gender is that these are the sole issues that are taken up in broadcast discussions about religion.

Read it all (and note that she references the BBC programme segment posted already below).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Read it all.

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It’s Friday night, I’m on vacation, and I’m trying to decide where to attend church on Sunday morning. I ask Siri on my iPhone, “Find Grace United Methodist Church, Any City, U.S.A.” Before I can even blink, I’m on the website and know that Grace UMC has worship services at 8:00, 9:15 and 10:45 a.m.

Then I click the “I’m New” button where I read a welcome from Pastor Mike Adams and have my most important questions answered before I choose to walk through the door for the first time: “Who are you guys? What’s really important to you? When do you get together? Is there anything for my kids? How do I find you guys? How do I get ahold of you?”

I’m feeling comfortable about what to expect when I arrive, a map is right there on the home page, I like what I read about the church’s ministries, and I already feel connected with the pastor. I’m sold. I’m heading to Grace UMC on Sunday morning.

Every congregation in the United Methodist Church has a new front door. It’s the Internet. People don’t use the Yellow Pages to find a church anymore, nor do they glance at the church ads in Saturday’s newspaper....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Methodist • * Theology • Pastoral Theology

The goal of your local church’s marketing effort is to increase the number of inbound leads and to drive conversions.... This is no different than the goal of commercial marketing, except we’re dealing in spiritual rather than tangible goods. Understanding how to increase inbound leads (people who express an interest in your church) and drive conversions (people who actually join your church) is not hard, but it does take leadership, planning, creativity and sustained effort. In other words, it takes a little work.

Most churches are already engaged in some forms of marketing. Any of the basic functions of parish life are marketing processes, including outreach, hospitality, ushering, preaching, maintaining the parish’s website and Facebook page, tweeting, and promoting the Sunday worship schedule. The challenge is to move from efforts focused on maintenance to efforts focused on growth.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * Theology

Here are the first two:

(1) Christian colleges and for-profit businesses sue over the Obama administration’s narrow religious exemption to its insurance
requirements for birth control, including emergency contraceptives\

(2) The Supreme Court sides with a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod school against a former teacher, saying the government can’t get involved in ministerial
employment.

Read them all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

Perhaps we should not be so pessimistic. After all, history builds nodal points into the affairs of humankind which offer the prospect of change. Within a few short months, we will have a new governor of the Bank of England, a new director-general of the BBC, a new Archbishop of Canterbury. Maybe between them they can usher in simultaneous economic, cultural and spiritual renewal.

"Unhappy is the land that needs a hero," Brecht had his Galileo idealistically say. But this disconsolate country could do with more than one. We should not have unrealistic hopes. But Mark Carney, the new man at the helm of monetary policy and financial regulation, has a good track record as head of Canada's admittedly smaller central bank. Tony Hall comes to the BBC with not just a solid journalistic reputation but having now sorted out the financial, artistic and political mess at the Royal Opera House. And Justin Welby, a former oil executive turned priest, will arrive as the new Cantuar with useful experience of managing complex processes and organisations which should come in handy in a bitterly divided church which has lost much moral authority in speaking to the rest of society.

The challenges they each face are formidable....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy, and this is our look ahead at the top religion stories we expect to be covering in 2013. We do this with the help of Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program; Kevin Eckstrom, editor in chief of Religion News Service; and E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a professor at Georgetown University, and a columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to you all. One of the big events of the new year will be the inauguration of Barack Obama to a second term, so we asked a wide variety of religion leaders what they hope for during the president’s next term.

REV. SAMUEL RODRIGUEZ, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference: If President Obama would revert back to the—that young, powerful, firey spokesperson in the 2004 Democratic National Convention who talked about reconciling the blue and the red state, about the God of the blue state and the God of the red state, then I believe that he has a chance to really emerge as a transformative, catalytic president reconciling our nation. We are more polarized today than ever before.

REV. JOIQUIM BARNES, New Hope CME Church, South Carolina: I’m hoping that he would be able to work well, that Congress would be able to work with him to come up with a real budget that’s going to help the least of these, and because when you help those who are in the most vulnerable situation, you end up helping the whole country.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General

Try to come up with your own top ten before looking and then read it all and compare the degree of overlap in their list with yours.

Update: Huffington Post's list may be found here.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture

Religion is a vast territory, and it’s always nice to find fellow travelers. Even better, a guide.

With that in mind, we’re starting a new feature here at RNS called “Ask the Experts.”

The idea is, readers like you send in questions about theology, history, literature, or any topic related to religion, and we’ll contact scholars to find out the answers.

In honor of Christmas, our first edition of Ask the Experts tackles questions about the events and traditions surrounding the holy day.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Welcome. I’m Bob Abernethy and this is our annual look back at the top religion and ethics news of the year. Religion & Ethics managing editor Kim Lawton is here, and so are Kevin Eckstrom, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service, and E.J. Dionne, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, professor at Georgetown University, and columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to you all. Kim has put together a short video reminder of what happened in 2012.

KIM LAWTON: A wave of mass shootings renewed age-old theological discussions about evil, suffering and tragedy. Especially after the massacre at the Connecticut elementary school, many religious leaders repeated calls for stricter gun control measures. Some called it a pro-life issue. One of the mass shootings took place in a house of worship. In August, six people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Once again, religion played an important role in the presidential election. For the first time ever, there were no white Protestants on either ticket. Although there wasn’t a lot of God-talk from President Obama or Mitt Romney, grassroots religious groups were active on both sides. Evangelical voters were divided during the primary season, but in the end they rallied around Romney, despite some concerns about voting for a Mormon candidate. Still, their support didn’t put him over the top. Obama narrowly won the Catholic vote, thanks to a strong showing among Latino Catholics.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture

If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, don’t bother.

Skip the mall and the neighborhood store, resist the urge to shop online and, by all means, don’t buy anything you don’t truly need.

So says Kalle Lasn, 70, maestro of the proudly radical magazine Adbusters, published in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Lasn takes gleeful pleasure in lobbing provocations at global corporations — and his latest salvo is “Buy Nothing Christmas.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

South Korean pop sensation Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has become the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, with the infectious music video approaching 1 billion views worldwide.

The wildfire popularity of the four-minute song and dance video, uploaded just six months ago, represents an inflection point for the online video site, as YouTube’s entertainment offerings expand beyond candid homemade videos such as “Charlie Bit My Finger” or such made-for-TV moments as Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” performance from the show “Britain’s Got Talent.”

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Globalization • Media • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • Asia • South Korea

Anyone who has followed the mainstream media’s coverage of the Catholic Church over the past decade or so knows that the biggest story out there — for perfectly valid reasons, let me stress — has been the latest wave of evidence that some members of the church hierarchy have hidden the sins and crimes of many clergy who have abused thousands of teens and children. These scandals have been drawing waves of coverage since the 1980s, although there are reporters out there who seem to think that this hellish pot of sin, sacrilege and clericism didn’t boil over until the revelations in Boston about a decade ago.

Let me stress, as your GetReligionistas have noted on numerous occasions, that this has been a scandal that has touched both the Catholic left and the right. To be perfectly blunt, quite a few Catholics on both sides of the theological spectrum have been hiding skeletons in their closets.....[so] Why did the accusations against [Bishop Walter ] Sullivan, in this crucial matter, get pushed all the way down to the bottom of this rather long wire-service report?

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

In other words, real freedom of speech, the kind that is morally important and politically essential, involves two things – freedom to stand back from any particular loyalty in the name of loyalty to the truth, and freedom to speak truths that the powerful want hidden or ignored. It is not simply a matter of the liberty to spread random or trivial information, certainly not the liberty of expressing abusive or demeaning opinions. And no-one can be complacent about the levels of hurt and distress experienced by those who have been at the receiving end of intrusive and insensitive investigation in the name of this debased version of liberty. It is about sharing the reality of painful and difficult human experience so that others may know it for what it is and so that they may have no excuse for ignoring it. This kind of truthtelling is always radical because it demands that we identify with the situations of those very unlike us and recognise that they share the same world and the same human challenges. Truth is not likely to be found where people are told never to ask questions or where those who are backed by force have the right to dictate what counts as news, so that the human reality and human cost of injustice or disaster can be swept out of sight and mind.

Our readings today reinforce this strongly. St Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians take it for granted that what is true is bound up with justice and honour among human beings: to think about what is true is to be committed to pursuing justice and honour, trust, fairness, all that is positive and in tune with people’s deepest longings and feelings.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • History • Law & Legal Issues • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Theology: Scripture

I am interested in your observations about the list--check it out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Politics in General • * Theology • Anthropology

As you read these words, does it make a difference if they are in print or online?

Yes, if you accept one conclusion of an official inquiry on the British press released last Thursday.

The report’s author, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, offers many recommendations on how to restore the integrity of British newspapers after recent scandals, which included hacking of personal cellphones, even one belonging to a deceased girl. His main proposals to Parliament are to pass a new law and use a government regulator to help hold newspapers to account for lapses of their own ethical codes.

While he is optimistic that traditional newspapers can be reformed – although his peculiar solutions may be a slippery slope to censorship – Sir Brian is strangely pessimistic that news consumers can ever trust much of what they read in the new digital media.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Law & Legal Issues • Media • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Vatican unveiled Pope Benedict XVI's Twitter account on Monday (Dec. 3) as it announced a series of new initiatives aimed at raising the church's online profile.

The pope's account, @Pontifex, drew nearly 200,000 followers in the hours after the announcement even though Benedict will not officially start tweeting until Dec. 12. That's when the pope plans to answer questions about faith submitted to him via Twitter through a special hashtag, #askpontifex, set up by the Vatican.

At least initially, the pope's tweets will be related to his official speeches and activities but their scope might be extended in the future, for example in response to natural disasters.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Globalization • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

[I know that]...Christian participation in the media circus is a dilemma. But it is not a new dilemma, it is basically the dilemma of the Incarnation: God himself becoming vulnerable in the world of fall and sin. A dilemma which challenges us to be realistic and not fool ourselves: I know that the IT world does not create a better life; I know that the aggressive stream of pictures and words and music is like an epidemic that can attack my soul. But I also know that without the salt and light of the Gospel the world will perish, without the involvement of Christian professionals at all levels the world will be a wasteland and the media will become reflected images and caricatures of ghosts and goblins. Only Christ-followers have what it takes to fight the ghosts. It is our mandate to find room for the God-dimension and, by the same token, the human dimension in the orbit of satellites and the chat room of social media. Without our presence as authentic and credible role models, the world shall definitely amuse itself to death (as John Naisbitt said).

I am not blind to the problems facing us as Christians in the media – the struggle to reinvent ‘relevance’ in the midst of a church that often has drowned in irrelevance, the challenge to overcome our own secular nature because so many of us have ceased to think ‘Christianly’, and the urgent need to avoid a process by which the media transform the Gospel into entertainment (a la the electronic church and some ‘Christian’ talk shows)...The Lord of the dance requires the best – and gives his gifts to his people accordingly.

Read it all..

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Dick Bott started his first Christian radio station in the basement of the former Blue Ridge Mall, sandwiched between a barber shop and a child care center.

Fifty years later, the Bott Radio Network consists of 91 stations reaching into 15 states, with a combined audience of more than 50 million people.

Programs also can be heard worldwide by satellite, on the Internet and through mobile digital technology.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

The Bishop of Norwich has today called for an end to the current self-regulation in light of the publication of the Leveson Report. The Rt Revd Graham James, who sits as a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications and is the Church of England's lead spokesman on media and communications policy, today commented on the need for a genuinely independent body which "must have as one of its primary tasks the protection of citizens from unfair and damaging portrayal in the press and give them a proper chance of redress. When members of the general public are unfairly traduced in a major press story, it is not a necessary consequence of press freedom but an abuse of it."

In an article on the Leveson Report to be published in the Church Times next week, Bishop Graham says: "The Leveson Report must surely bring the era of self-regulation to an end. We do need a genuinely independent body able to investigate the practices of the press without the trigger of a complaint bringing it into action. It must be properly resourced by the industry itself but that doesn't mean it needs to build a large bureaucracy."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

As a Christian and career scientist, I see the episode as an opportunity for both Republicans and evangelicals to establish a more coherent policy on evolution, creation and science, for two reasons.

First, the age of the Earth and the rejection of evolution aren't core Christian beliefs. Neither appears in the Nicene or Apostle's Creed. Nor did Jesus teach them. Historical Christianity has not focused on how God created the universe, but on how God saves humanity through Jesus' death and resurrection.

Currently, a debate is unfolding in theological seminaries and conferences about the correct interpretation of the Bible's Genesis account of creation. Echoing thinkers like St. Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Mark Noll and Pope John Paul II, many of the conservative theologians in the debate believe that a serious reading of Genesis can be compatible with the scientific account of our origins.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Theology • Apologetics • Theology: Scripture

You see, the CNN team seems to think that there is such a thing as a Southern Baptist tradition (there are many, quite frankly) and even a Southern Baptist theology (there is no one such approach to doctrine; ask Bill Clinton about that). The elder Stanley is held up as a prime example of the old Southern Baptist way and then Andy becomes the brave young leader who steps away from that frozen orthodoxy and finds his own way.

Truth is, Baptists and members of similar free-church flocks always evolve from generation to generation with millions of churchgoers flocking to the hot new preachers and the emerging super congregations that rise and fall in power year after year, decade after decade. One generation always creates its own new tradition and then outvotes the older generation by moving on to something new. In these evolving structures only the living saints get to vote.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Baptists • Evangelicals

You can be sold in seconds.

No, wait: make that milliseconds.

The odds are that access to you — or at least the online you — is being bought and sold in less than the blink of an eye. On the Web, powerful algorithms are sizing you up, based on myriad data points: what you Google, the sites you visit, the ads you click. Then, in real time, the chance to show you an ad is auctioned to the highest bidder.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life

By now I hope that most are aware that a new TEC steering committee has announced a clergy day that it claims is for the Diocese of South Carolina on Thursday at St. Mark’s, Charleston. So that there is no doubt, this is not a legitimate gathering of the Diocese of South Carolina.

While the steering committee and its associates are certainly free to meet, what they are attempting to perpetrate is identity theft. They are not “the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina,” nor are they “the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina” or “The Diocese of South Carolina.” Those are legal names which belong to us. This group does not have any right to use these names or the Diocesan seal.

For now, I would give you the following advice for your parish:

1. If there is any doubt about the validity of any communication from the Diocese, feel free to contact us to confirm its reliability. The confusion is intentional and for now unavoidable. If you are not sure about the source of anything that presents itself as a diocesan communication, please contact us and ask.

2. As you become aware of fraudulent communications, you can send a return email asking them to discontinue sending fraudulent emails and then mark them as SPAM in your e-mail program for future screening. You can also notify your internet service provider (ISP). They can assist you in blocking future attempts at deceptive communications.

3. Finally, please help us keep your parishioners informed. There is a wealth of information available to you on the Diocesan Website (http://www.dioceseofsc.org). I would particularly commend several articles today on these recent activities of the steering committee. Their analysis is a valuable tool in helping your members understand these events.

http://anglicanink.com/article/presiding-bishop-backs-ecclesiastical-coup-south-carolina

http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/

http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2012/11/consumed-by-litigation-tec-in-south-carolina/

As we prepare for the next gathering of the Diocese of South Carolina, our Special Diocesan Convention this Saturday (November 17th @ St. Philip’s, Charleston), please feel free to let me know if there is other assistance I can provide you or your parish as we get ready.

In Christ's service,

--(The Rev.) Jim Lewis is Canon to the Ordinary
 in the Diocese of South Carolina

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • TEC Polity & Canons • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

The media's interest in the appointment is a sign of the still-powerful Christian heritage of Britain. And the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with his London residence just across the river from the House of Commons, is a potent symbol of that.

What is also clear, however, is that this Christian heritage appears to be growing more distant. One reporter commented that the new archbishop was not, for example, on the front page of today's Daily Mail whereas 20 years ago he would have been. The interest in Archbishop-designate Welby's appointment has not grabbed the attention of the popular press although perhaps if the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, who has written a column for the Sun on Sunday, had been appointed, that might have been different.

There is also a noticeable decrease in the number of specialist reporters covering religion. Bishop Welby handled his first encounter with the media impressively.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

The research examined by the commission “clearly shows that media violence consumption increases the relative risk of aggression, defined as intentional harm to another person that could be verbal, relational, or physical,” the report said.

More than 15 meta-analyses, each bringing together multiple studies, have been published on the link between media violence and aggression. The results of all these studies found that exposure to media violence not only increases aggressive behaviour, but also aggressive thoughts, feelings, physiological arousal, and decreases prosocial behavior.

It is mistaken to think that the aggression must be immediate or severe, such as shooting someone, the report qualified. It can take a variety of forms, such as a child being more defiant and disrespectful, or an adult being less open to others.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Movies & Television • Violence

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • TEC Diocesan Conventions/Diocesan Councils • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

...it was extremely disturbing to learn that on Wednesday afternoon, November 7, 2012, a majority of the clergy of the Diocese of South Carolina received an email that pretended to be from the Diocese of South Carolina but in fact was not. The sender of the email was not identified beyond an email address registered to an organization in Florida named “Domain Discreet Privacy Service”. The corresponding web page is hosted by a San Francisco organization stating: “This temporary landing page will be replaced when you publish your site.”

The email was an invitation to a “Clergy Day for the Diocese,” to be hosted at Holy Communion, Charleston and presided over by Bishop. Charles von Rosenberg (A retired bishop from Tennessee).

There are several crucial facts that need to be addressed regarding this announcement.

First, this message did not come from the Diocese of South Carolina.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Executive Council • TEC Bishops • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • TEC Polity & Canons • * Culture-Watch • Media

On the third day after Hurricane Sandy soaked Hoboken in several feet of water, leaving the city one of the most crippled in the region, those with the least found themselves suspended in the storm’s cold, dark aftermath. Late this week, Hoboken started to hum with generators and a taco truck.

The projects where [Grace] Rodriguez and her daughter, Jayleen Avalos, lived were still at the bottom of the world. The 25 or so buildings operated by the Hoboken Housing Authority were clustered together on 17 acres at the city’s southern edge. They were hemmed in by gentrification on one side — $600,000 lofts with same-day shirt service dry cleaners — and a steel fence in the back. Two feet of floodwater created a moat around the buildings. The National Guard brought water and MREs. The Red Cross brought bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.

But the one commodity residents were starved for was information, and the absence of it deepened their sense of isolation. The city government used social media to update citizens. Grace Rodriguez would have appreciated a bullhorn.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Media • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • The U.S. Government • Politics in General • City Government • State Government • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why so many people in conservative-church pews and pulpits cannot grasp the fact that Obama is a liberal Christian. Yes, he may be so doctrinally liberal that, when it comes to eternal questions, he believes that there are no ultimate differences between Christians, Jews, Muslims and everybody else — but he is certainly not alone in believing that. The leaders of many denominations believe that. Legions of seminary professors agree with him.

In oh so many ways, Obama is a perfectly normal liberal Protestant Christian.

However, as recent Pew Forum research made clear, the world of liberal Protestantism is no longer at the heart of American life. The old mainline is now on the sideline, to the left of the mainstream. That does not mean that oldline churches are not important or worthy of balanced, nuanced coverage.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • US Presidential Election 2012

Jimmy Savile was one of Britain's biggest stars — and, allegedly, one of its worst sexual predators. Now the nation is asking whether there was a link between one and the other.

Was this man at the heart of the nation's popular culture a product of the permissive 1960s and '70s, or do the conditions that allegedly let him get away with repeated child sex abuse still exist, even as awareness of the problem is more widespread?

"We're kidding ourselves if we think it is all hunky dory now, but obviously it was more lax," said Sarah Nelson, a child abuse expert at Edinburgh University. "The culture among disc jockeys at the time allowed a license you wouldn't get now."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

From here:

As you probably already know, or as you can read below, on Monday the 15th of October the storm/battle we've been expecting finally arrived. Late yesterday (Wed) afternoon we learned that the actions taken by the Presiding Bishop triggered automatic corporate resolutions that have now taken the Diocese out of The Episcopal Church....What this means for us down the road is not yet totally clear. What is clear is that we will continue to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. And in partnership with our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the Diocese we will stand for the truth of His Word.

For me personally, I find this all very, very sad. I'm what we call a "cradle" Episcopalian, i.e. [it has been true of me] all of my life. My parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc. etc. were also. My sisters both teach in Episcopal schools, My grandmother started an Episcopal pre-school. And I could go on and on. I've come to understand though what St. Paul wrote to the Philippians in chapter 3. After he laid out his Jewish credentials he said, "But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." I certainly am feeling a sense of loss, but I declare with Paul, I "count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: South Carolina • TEC Polity & Canons • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

Faced with falling congregations, the Church of England is finding digital engagement via Twitter, Facebook and blogging sites a powerful and important part of its ministry and mission.

Sister Elizabeth Pio based in Southsea, Portsmouth, is the Anglican nun behind @bethanysister -which has attracted a followership of over 1300. She uses the site as an electronic notice board, sharing spiritual insights and prayers as well as her take on current affairs and even football matches.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Globalization • Media • Science & Technology • * Theology

Watch it all, really a lot of fun.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Media

Check them out.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media

Newsweek, the 80-year-old US current affairs magazine, is to become an online-only publication.

The last print edition will be on 31 December, reflecting the trend for newspapers and magazines to move online as traditional advertising declines.

Newsweek merged with the internet news group the Daily Beast two years ago.

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The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense.

--From Nate Silver of the New York Times 538 blog on the day in September where one poll had President Obama 14 ahead in Wisconsin, and another had Romney ahead by 3 in New Hampshire.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Psychology • Science & Technology • Sociology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A.

The Roman Catholic Church is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council, in October 1962; but the 47 years since its close have been riven with controversy about its application. Has the Roman Catholic Church gone far enough in pursuing the spirit of openness that was experienced in Rome during the Council's three years of debate? Or does the cultural and social revolution since the mid-'60s require an approach more deeply rooted in the certainties of the past? The former is the question asked by most lay Roman Catholics, and, indeed, most in the hierarchy, when talking in general terms; the latter question tends to be expressed when it comes to putting any reforms into practice.

The vernacular liturgy is the most obvious change brought about by the Council, but more significant, perhaps, has been a thorough change of attitude....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Media • * Religion News & Commentary • Ecumenical Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

In the past, the Church has divided along the tribal lines of evangelicals, liberals and Anglo-Catholics. The totemic issues which mark its dividing lines – over the acceptability of gay relationships, women priests and now women bishops – are completely settled for the vast majority of the population. Interestingly, there are suggestions that they are now being settled in the Church too; though conservative evangelicals remain implacably opposed to modern views on gender and sexuality, the terms in which they debate have subtly shifted in ways which suggest that it is only a matter of time before liberal tolerance prevails.

Instead, there is a new division inside the Church. It is between those who want a safe pair of hands to keep Anglicans together long enough for the old differences to dissolve and those who want someone who will reimagine the institution for the modern age with a bolder vision of purpose. The choice has significant implications for the rest of society....

....stalemate seems to have been reached in successive secret ballots. Welby is seen as too inexperienced and possibly too conservative and James as too liberal and a bit uninspiring. It may be time for a caretaker until the qualities of the new generation of bishops have become more clear. In the circumstances, the Church should consider the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones.....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

Orient and Occident online magazine seeks to promote not just coexistence but cooperation with Muslims.
It was Egyptian media that brought the appalling "Innocence of Muslims" trailer to the wider attention of Muslims around the world. The consequences have been tragic to watch.
The country has also seen all-too-regular violent clashes between local Muslim and Christian communities, that have got no better since Egypt's revolution.
In this difficult atmosphere, the Diocese of Egypt, under the leadership of Bishop Mouneer Hanna Anis, has relaunched a magazine online that was first started by two pioneering CMS missionaries more than 100 years ago.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Egypt • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations

“Keep Calm and Carry On?” Sorry, that was 2009.

Ever since the wartime British propaganda poster bearing those soothing words went viral a few years ago, ending up on iPhone cases and coffee mugs, design types have been searching for the next great hyperlinked homily.

Lately, the leading candidates are popping up in the most unlikely of places: Pinterest. The explosively popular image-sharing site has fallen under the spell of words — that is, quotes from the great minds that offer lessons to live by.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life

The reality is that pastors love stats-- and, at LifeWay Research, we love pastors that love stats! We just want you to love them rightly. Here are a few interesting statistics from our research.

Read it all and check out all the charts.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals

BBC--Romney 'wins' US election debate

FT--Romney dominates presidential debate

Washington Post--Rejuvenated Romney hammers Obama on his economic record

New York Times--Obama and Romney Tangle on Economy

[London] Times--Combative Romney wins first debate

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

"Substantial reasons would lead one to conclude that the papyrus is indeed a clumsy forgery," the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in an editorial by its editor, Gian Maria Vian. "In any case, it's a fake."

Joining a highly charged academic debate over the authenticity of the text, written in ancient Egyptian Coptic, the newspaper published a lengthy analysis by expert Alberto Camplani of Rome's La Sapienza university, outlining doubts about the manuscript and urging extreme caution.

The fragment, which reads "Jesus said to them, my wife" was unveiled by Harvard Professor Karen King as a text from the 4th century at a congress of Coptic Studies in Rome last week.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

From here:

This week's meeting of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) has been accompanied by much speculation about possible candidates and the likely timing of an announcement of the name of who will succeed Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury when he steps down to become Master of Magdalene College.

The CNC is an elected, prayerful body. Its meetings are necessarily confidential to enable members to fulfil their important responsibilities for discerning who should undertake this major national and international role. Previous official briefings have indicated that an announcement is expected during the autumn and that remains the case; the work of the Commission continues. There will be no comment on any speculation about candidates or about the CNC's deliberations. Dr Williams remains in office until the end of December.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Read it all; interesting choices in terms of who and what.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * Theology

Check them out (and note that a slideshow option is available).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media

In "Something Understood" for BBC Radio 4, Mark Tully talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury about some of the controversies the Archbishop has negotiated throughout his time in office, and considers the premise that "discretion is the better part of valour"

Listen to it all via the link provided.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

It’s been six years since National Geographic revealed, amid much fanfare and discussion, the existence of a heretofore-unknown document that seemed to retell the New Testament narrative from the point of view of Judas Iscariot. That experience should have been a cautionary tale about the intersection of Biblical archaeology and media sensationalism: The first wave of coverage suggested that the document painted Judas as a misunderstood hero who was “only obeying his master’s wishes when he betrayed Jesus with a kiss,” but the evidence soon mounted that this sensationalistic claim relied on dubious translation decisions, and that the Judas in the fragmentary gospel might well actually be the embodiment of a Gnostic “king of demons” rather than Jesus’s most loyal friend.

It’s possible that a similar reassessment may be in store for this month’s entry in the “lost gospel” genre, a fragment of a fourth-century transcription of a late-second century Gnostic text that contains a line in which Jesus seems to refer to Mary Magdalene as his wife. Indeed, the document may ultimately prove to be an outright forgery or fraud, as some scholars are already suggesting. But from the point of view of Christian faith and the quest for the Jesus of history, it actually doesn’t matter all that much either way. Even if this scrap of text has been authentically identified and interpreted, it still tells us much more about the religious preoccupations of our own era, and particularly the very American desire to refashion Jesus of Nazareth in our own image rather than letting go of him altogether, than it does about the Jesus who actually lived and preached in Palestine in the early decades A.D.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Religion & Culture • * Theology • Christology • Theology: Scripture

An Italian startup is launching a web advertising platform that aims to provide Catholic websites with Catholic-approved advertisements.

The platform, called AdEthic, will be presented on Thursday (Sept. 20) at a press conference in Rome, as part of a wider Catholic project to engage in social media.

According to Andrea Salvati, a manager at Google Italy who will take the role of CEO at AdEthic in October, the platform wants to tap into the vast Catholic online market that has so far been unable or unwilling to use advertisements.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

After a week of deadly international protests against an anti-Islam film, a French satirical magazine is pouring oil on the fiery debate between freedom of expression and offensive provocation.
The magazine Charlie Hebdo, which is known for outrageous humor, published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Mohammed on Wednesday.
The issue hit the stands eight days after a video mocking the Muslim prophet triggered angry protests, including one that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Media • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

The Review of the See of Canterbury chaired by Lord Hurd concluded that ‘We believe that leadership of the Anglican Communion will remain one of the principal modern roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury’.

Brogan, former Chief Political Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, is an experienced journalist and a practising Catholic. It is thought unlikely that he would have misrepresented the Archbishop’s words in the way suggested by Canon Kearon and it is more likely that the Archbishop was indulging in speculation and ‘blue sky thinking’ without measuring the impact his words would make.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ecclesiology

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Media • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The violent deaths of four American diplomatic personnel in Libya during a heavily armed and possibly planned assault on a flimsily protected consulate facility on the Sept. 11 anniversary provoked an uproar in Washington on Wednesday, presenting new challenges in the volatile Middle East less than two months before the American presidential election.

The killings of the four Americans on Tuesday, including the ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, also raised basic questions about security and intelligence in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, where the assault took place, as well as other American diplomatic facilities elsewhere in the region, where deep-seated anti-American sentiment remains a potent force despite United States support for the Arab Spring uprisings that have transfixed the region for nearly two years.

President Obama denounced the attack, promised to avenge the killings and ordered tighter security at all American diplomatic installations. The administration also dispatched 50 Marines to Libya for greater diplomatic protection, ordered all nonemergency personnel to leave Libya and warned Americans not to travel there, suggesting further attacks were possible. A senior defense official said Wednesday night that the Pentagon was moving two warships toward the Libyan coast as a precaution.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Media • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • America/U.S.A. • Middle East • Egypt • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

I am a stay-at-home mother of four who has tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with. Therefore I was shocked when my oldest daughter, "Emily," suddenly announced she had "given up believing in God" and decided to "come out" as an atheist.

She said she was "happy" in her decision and that it just "felt right." She no longer wishes to attend church, speak to the pastor or even participate in family prayers.

I love my daughter dearly, but I am troubled by this turn of events. She has never seriously misbehaved or otherwise given me cause to worry before this. Emily insists she is old enough to make up her own mind, but I simply do not think a girl of 16 has the maturity to make such a life-changing decision....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Media • Psychology • Religion & Culture

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

The US television network NBC was branded an embarrassment yesterday for its coverage of the Paralympics as athletes, sports chiefs and disability campaigners called for better recognition by international broadcasters of the world’s second largest sports event.
Fierce reaction to the widespread blackout beyond Britain of the Opening Ceremony on Wednesday night came after a record number of people tuned in to watch the critically acclaimed event live on Channel 4.
The host broadcaster reported a peak audience of 11.2 million viewers, its biggest for more than ten years.
Conversely, NBC will wait until September 16 before screening its 90-minute special on the Paralympics, including edited highlights of the show.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Media • Movies & Television • Sports • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

For the next three months, the political press will engage in an extended masquerade, designed to persuade credulous readers and excitable viewers that the Republican presidential nomination is actually up for grabs.

Last week the big story was Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the polls, and then Rick Perry’s combativeness at the Las Vegas debate. Next week, perhaps, it will be Newt Gingrich’s surprising resilience or Ron Paul’s potential strength in the early caucuses or the appeal of Perry’s flat-tax plan. Then there will come a debate in which Mitt Romney looks shabby instead of smooth, a poll that shows one of his rivals surging, a moment when all his many weaknesses are on every pundit’s lips.

Please do not listen to any of them. Ignore the Politico daily briefings, the Rasmussen tracking polls, the angst from conservative activists over Romney’s past deviations and present-day dishonesties. Please ignore me as well, should campaign fever inspire a column about the Santorum surge or the Huntsman scenario. Because barring an unprecedented suspension of the laws of American politics, Mitt Romney has this thing wrapped up.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Media • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President

Ok, take a look at this.



That is but one photo of 9000 women from around greater Charleston and beyond at the North Charleston Coliseum this past weekend who came to hear Bible teacher Beth Moore.

Now explain something to me. How is this not a major story? Would you not want, say, to interview Beth Moore? To talk to some of the participants (who came from every Christian tradition imaginable)? To find out why people came and stood in line for hours just to get inside? To ask them what they learned? To talk to the (quite talented and influential) music team? To find out why the wife of a local Episcopal Church minister (yes, you read that correctly) was the local area coordinator for the event? My questions could go and on.

Instead we get three perfunctory announcements and that is all, like this--on August 18th. Not one story, no features, no interviews, no local angles--and all this in a city where faith is a major part of common life.

Anyone else think this is outrageous and sad? I do--KSH.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * By Kendall • * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • * South Carolina • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there's a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.

"The brain works more like a muscle than we thought," Blake says. "So if you're pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you're more likely to behave that way as well."

Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity--including viewing such material on TV--actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. "That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving," he says. "Basically, it turns your brain to mush."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Media • Movies & Television • Psychology • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market

David Silverman, president of New Jersey-based American Atheists, atheists.org, unveiled the organization’s newest billboard campaign, which mocks religion in the political landscape. The billboards feature perceived aspects of Christianity and Mormonism that, according to American Atheists, have no place in politics.

In the billboard on Christianity, for instance, God is called "sadistic" and Jesus a "useless saviour." Christianity is said to promote hate but call it "love." In the billboard on Mormonism, God is called a "space alien" and the faith is accused of baptizing dead people.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Atheism • Mormons

One challenge, [Conor] Dwyer and others said, is that abstinent singles can struggle to find close friends who empathize with their situation.

“When my friends found out I was planning on waiting until I was married, I got laughed at quite a bit,” said Miki Reaume, a Christian and former Rockette at Radio City Music Hall who lived in New York for nine years before marrying in 2010.

When she dated non-Christians, Reaume said, the topic would usually arise on the third date.

“And then the relationship ended,” she said.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Marriage & Family • Media • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Other Faiths • Mormons • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Media • * South Carolina

Sheryl Fancher likes to tell social media nightmare stories that make ministers cringe.

Like the one about a pastor who posted derogatory remarks about church members on his Facebook page without realizing his account was set to public.

Ouch....

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Media • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology