Katherine Commale, a 7-year-old from Downingtown, Chester County, has been named "United Methodist of the Year" for 2008, according to the United Methodist Reporter.
She raised a whopping $85,000 for Nothing but Nets, a project to combat poverty-related diseases. The second-grader turns 8 on Jan. 4.
Every $10 donation to Nothing but Nets purchases one bed net to help fight malaria, so Katherine's responsible for a ton of nets. Go girl!
Judging by the cover, it looks like the Goth Bible.
A Swedish advertising executive has published "Bible Illuminated: The Book," which is the New Testament packaged like a glossy magazine -- chock full of professional photographs that are anything but what you'd expect to find in an illustrated Bible:
Scenes from post-Katrina New Orleans. Headshots of Angelina Jolie, Bono, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. A veil-covered African mother holding a child (illustrating the story of Mary and Jesus). A four-page spread of an animal slaughterhouse in Nigeria. A man pumping gas. An anti-globalization protester in a clown nose. And an Indian woman giving birth to her first child.
It's edgy, to say the least. And thought-provoking. And, I admit, really hard to put down.
A 43-year-old Episcopal priest who allegedly loves the night-club life in Chelsea, NYC, has been removed as vicar from the St. James Episcopal Church in Dundaff, Susquehanna County, and cannot exercise priestly ministry, according to the
New York Daily News and Scranton Times. From the Daily News:
The big-spending, champagne-swilling, club-hopping priest from the coal fields of Pennsylvania is out of a job. Rev. Gregory Malia - who put aside the Gospels to become a disciple of Chelsea nightlife - was booted Monday from his post as vicar of a down-home parish in Carbondale, Pa. ... Driving from distant Wilkes Barre, Pa. - where bedtimes are early and life is slow - Malia would arrive in clubland and shell out thousands of dollars in tips, send bottles of Dom Perignon to fellow clubgoers and squire cocktail waitresses around town on shopping sprees.
I missed this last week while on vacation, but it's still worth a post. Ted Olsen at Christianity Today has a list of Christmas songs that are "just plain wrong."
First on the list, "I Saw Three Ships":
Bethlehem is landlocked, so it is historically improbable that our savior Christ and his lady came sailing in on Christmas day in the morning. But that's not all that's problematic about the song. Where's Joseph? If it's just Jesus and Mary, why do they need three ships? Surely Mary didn't just arrive in Bethlehem the morning of the birth...
The Wall Street Journal reports that a surprising number of churches are defaulting on loans and heading for bankruptcy:
During this holiday season of hard times, not even houses of God have been spared. Some lenders believe more churches than ever have fallen behind on loans or defaulted this year. Some churches, and at least one company that specialized in church lending, have filed for bankruptcy. Church giving is down as much as 15 percent in some places, pastors and lenders report.
The financial problems are crimping a church building boom that began in the 1990s, when megachurches multiplied, turning many houses of worship into suburban social centers complete with bookstores, gyms and coffee bars. Lenders say mortgage applications are down, while some commercial lenders no longer see churches as a safe investment.
Statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics show that December has the lowest suicide rate of any month of the year, reports Religion News Service.
The holidays are "just not a time for suicide -- that's the bottom line," said Dan Romer, an expert on suicide statistics at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center. Read more.
A tope is a usually dome-shaped monument built by Buddhists. It's also known as a stupa. (At right is the Jetavanaramaya stupa in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.)
Read a history of stupas, learn how to build one or visit the Dhamek Stupa in Sarnath, India, where it's believed the Buddha delivered his first sermon.
Tope is also an intransitive verb meaning to drink (liquor) habitually and copiously. It's also a small shark with a long snout.
Thanks to Wordsmith.org.
Christianity Today has an interesting Q&A: "What Obama's Election Means for the Segregated Church" or "Why black and white evangelicals can't believe the other voted as they did."
The interview is with Michael O. Emerson, founding director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University. He is also co-author of "People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America" and several other books on congregational life and race.
The Rev. B. Penrose Hoover, bishop of the Lower Susquehanna Synod, will travel next month to Israel, Jordan and Palestine with 58 other bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and five Canadian bishops.
Hoover and the others will meet Jan. 6-13 with Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian religious, community and political leaders, visit congregations and schools and visit sites of religious significance.
The bishops and their spouses provided synod and personal funds for the visit, according to a news release.
It will be the first time to the Middle East for Hoover, who lives in Fairview Township. He said he hopes to expand his "knowledge and understanding of the complexity of the issues confronting those who must live in this troubled promised land from day to day."
motet
noun (music)
A polyphonic composition based on a sacred text and usually sung without accompaniment.
-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth edition)
Religion's role in the U.S. presidential race produced the biggest religion stories of 2008, according to a survey of more than 100 religion journalists last week.
The religion specialists of the Religion Newswriters Association chose the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as the No. 1 story, with Democratic outreach to faith communities and GOP vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin's selection as the second and third top stories, respectively.
Barack Obama was named the top Religion Newsmaker of 2008. Read the top 10 stories at the jump.
On his Web site, Bishop Nathan D. Baxter of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania says "in some ways, this is not a surprise" that Episcopal dioceses and others that withdrew from the church in dissent have proposed a plan to form a new Anglican presence in the U.S. and Canada. (See earlier post.)
"Yet it is disappointing to lose the fellowship of these four of our 110 Episcopal dioceses; and as Episcopalians, it is also painful to be spoken of with such public disrespect and lack of charity," Baxter writes in his December letter to the diocese.
More at the jump.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's home church in Wasilla was badly damaged by arson Friday, leading Palin to apologize if the fire was connected to ''undeserved negative attention'' from her failed campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee, reports the New York Times.
Damage to the Wasilla Bible Church was estimated at $1 million, authorities said. No one was injured.
While you're on the NYT site, check out this story about poor economic times drawing crowds to evangelical Christian houses of worship.
Here's a quote: "It's a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us," said the Rev. A. R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York's largest evangelical congregation, where regulars are arriving earlier to get a seat. "When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors."
The Vatican on Friday issued a statement condemning advanced infertility treatments and newer forms of contraception such as the "morning after" pill.
The church's highest doctrinal body reaffirmed its long-standing prohibition of in-vitro fertilization and also cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Church officials said the document was meant as an update to a 1987 statement under Pope John Paul II.
Experts are saying there was little new in Friday's statement -- it covers medical advances that were not around in 1987, according to Religion News Service.
Like the 1987 document, the statement condemns in-vitro and all other techniques that involve "replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure." Read more here, here and here.
A new study from researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that fertility patients who are done having children feel responsible for the stored, frozen embryos left over from their treatment but a majority are against implanting the embryos in anyone else.
What do you do with the 500,000, unused frozen embryos stored in fertility clinic storage vats?
Of course, moral considerations come in to play here. Some parents probably decide what to do considering their belief about when life begins -- at fertilization, implantation or at some other point.
What would you do?
There's an interesting, beer-related conversation going on over at the newspaper's online forum. Here's the basic scenario:
The owner of a beer distributorship was shopping for a fuel oil delivery service. He was ready to make a deal with a local supplier when its representative asked what business he was in. When the owner explained, the oil delivery company rep said that, because he's a Christian and doesn't believe in drinking alcohol, he doesn't do business with companies like beer distributors.
Follow the discussion here.
A tiny Methodist church in western Pennsylvania has inherited more than $2 million from a farmer who lived in a mobile home. The pastor says he never met the man. Read the full story.
Religion scholar Martin Marty looks at a piece by Paul Elie in the Nov. 21 issue of Commonweal and public Catholicism today. Read his column at the jump.
Do you include tithing in your household budget? Congregational leaders hope you do.
The most recent cover story of Christianity Today talks about the lack of generosity among U.S. Christians and what its repercussions will be as the economy gets worse and more folks need a helping hand. Here's the stats:
More than one out of four American Protestants give away no money at all--"not even a token $5 per year," say sociologists Christian Smith, Michael Emerson, and Patricia Snell in a new study on Christian giving, "Passing the Plate" (Oxford University Press). Of all Christian groups, evangelical Protestants score best: Only 10 percent give nothing away. Evangelicals tend to be the most generous, but they do not outperform their peers enough to wear a badge of honor. Thirty-six percent report that they give away less than 2 percent of their income. Only about 27 percent tithe.
Do you tithe? If so, how do you determine how much to give? How does your house of worship encourage you to increase your giving?
Theological conservatives who left the U.S. Episcopal Church said Wednesday they'd formed a rival North American province of Anglicans. Today, the spiritual leader of the 77-million-member world Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, responded:
"There are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces," a spokesperson said.
"Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete. In relation to the recent announcement from the meeting of the Common Cause Partnership in Chicago, the process has not yet begun."
I think that's a definitive: You're not a separate province til we say so.
The heads of seminaries of the country's largest Lutheran denomination issued letters asking for continued support for their institutions despite the economic woes of recent months, the ELCA News Service reports.
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg is among eight seminaries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
A Nov. 21 statement from the deans and presidents of the seminaries came after Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, announced last month its decision to release some faculty and staff and restructure its programs because of the market's effect on its endowment.
In case you missed this news this last week, a CIA internal report could reopen the controversy about the 2001 shootdown of an American missionary plane mistakenly identified as a possible drug-smuggling craft flying over the Amazon region of Peru.
The missionary group's plane was sponsored by a Fairview Township-based organization, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.
Veronica "Roni" Bowers of Muskegon, Mich., and her 7-month-old daughter Charity were killed. (AP photo)
A church in Jefferson County has gone to court to fight for its homeless ministry.
The First Apostles Doctrine Church alleges the borough of Brookville (population 4,600) improperly used its zoning laws to bar the homeless from staying in the church parsonage, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In a lawsuit filed last month, the American Civil Liberties Union contends the church must be allowed to provide shelter to "guests" in its parsonage because doing so is integral to its outreach ministry to the homeless.
Witold Walczak of the state ACLU is representing the church. He also helped represent the plaintiffs in the Dover intelligent design case.
Religion scholar Martin Marty has devoted his most recent Sightings column to highlight the Sojourners' magazine's take on what clergy should make of the economic mess. An excerpt:
"... the combination of the prophetic and the pastoral advocated by (Jim) Wallis and the reminder by (Diana Butler) Bass that the nation's economic life cannot be improved through the individualist dog-eat-dog policies and advocacies of recent years suggests that some Christian leaders want to reach to historically valuable Christian (and other religious) modes and precedents to make their positive contributions in the crisis. Details later, the editors would say."
Follow the jump to keep reading.
