The secularists’ god
A modern secularist quite often accepts the idea of God. What, however, he emphatically negates is precisely the sacramentality of man and world.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World
Peter Pan and Prosperity
There was a strangely gripping part of the televised Peter Pan of my childhood (featuring Mary Martin as Peter) where Tinkerbell drank poison to save Peter, but she “could get will again if children believed in fairies.” The children watching were encouraged to clap to let Tinkerbell know they believed.
Her recovery was nothing short of miraculous. No thanks to me.
I’m almost positive I didn’t clap because I didn’t believe in fairies. I even felt a bit resentful at the manipulation, (Yeah, I was that kid.)
Believe hard enough and good things will happen to you, from earthly to heavenly riches (so it’s your own fault if you’re not rich) is not a message that has gone away.
Christian America or White America?
We often hear that the most significant trend in religion in America is the rise of the “nones,” those who profess no religious affiliation. That demographic group is indeed important for the future of religion, culture and politics in America, and as of 2021, Pew reported that 29 percent of all adults identified as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.” But alongside that trend, the changing demographics of Christianity promise to transform faith and religious discourse. We cannot assume that America will become more secular so long as the future of America is less white.
…
I quickly recognized that the standard American religious survey categories no longer account for the realities expressed in the church in America. “White evangelicalism,” “Protestant mainline” and “progressive” are categories that are largely defined by a white majority. This “browning” of the church in America, as some scholars call it, scrambles all the categories. What we are seeing isn’t simply that white evangelicalism is changing; it’s that something new is emerging.
… What will it mean for politics and religion in America when religious conservatives are by and large voices of color? Even now, when white progressives criticize “conservative Christians” or “conservative evangelicals,” they, perhaps unknowingly, are largely critiquing people of color from the majority world. On the other hand, when conservatives for so-called family values take anti-immigration stances, they are ironically abetting the secularization of America.
This influx of nonwhite believers will challenge white religious conservatives to choose between xenophobia and building alliances with immigrants who share their views on social issues. These trends will also challenge them to unbundle their religious views on social issues from a kind of libertarian economics that harms those who are less wealthy. In the same way, white progressives will be in the awkward spot of choosing whether to continue to push boundaries about sexuality and gender — which will put them on the side of largely white, wealthier Westerners — or to be in solidarity with those from the majority world who most likely hold views that are out of step with social progressivism.**
I skipped over this once or twice the day it appeared, on the assumption that it was demographic stuff I already knew. But while I knew the “arc,” I did not know how far the trends have progressed nor had I thought about the political ramifications of conservative Christians of several colors making political cause against white progressives.
(Silly me! I tend to think about “religion” in religious terms, not political. And in religious terms, some of the groups Warren describes do not sound unequivocally Christian.)
Ambiguity about creation
Put in biblical imagery, this tension might be expressed as follows: On the one hand, we want, with the psalmist, to see the lion stalking its prey as seeking its food “from God” (Ps 103/4.21). On the other hand, we also want to say, with the Book of Isaiah, that when God’s ultimate purposes are fulfilled, “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid” (Is 11.6). And in wanting to use both of these images, we are implicitly admitting to an ambiguity in our attitude to God’s creation as we experience it.
Christopher C. Knight, Science and the Christian Faith
It takes a family to raise a Christian
Protecting mumbo-jumbo and mummery?
Legislators in Washington State, Vermont, and Delaware are trying to abolish clergy-penitent privilege in the context of mandatory reporter laws. In other words, a Clergyman who hears a confession of child sexual abuse would have to report it.
Eric Kniffin of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has been fighting these legislative efforts and explains persuasively why the bills are “impractical, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.”
All I want to add (or emphasize), as a retired attorney and a Christian in a tradition that practices sacramental confession, is that I’m offended by an odious implication of abolishing the clergy-penitent privilege while continuing the attorney-client privilege: that implication is that the attorney-client privilege is important because it allows attorneys to do important jobs properly while the clergy-penitent privilege merely protects some mumbo-jumbo and mummery.
Fortunately, that very invidious implication is part of the reason why the laws are unconstitutional.
Epistle of James
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
I’ve always been more diligent about avoiding spots than about visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
Getting real
You look so good the slum must be inside you
Poet Tomas Tranströmer via Martin Shaw
For all its piety and fervor, today’s United States needs to be recognized for what it really is: not a Christian country, but a nation of heretics.
Ross Douthat, Bad Religion
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 