Even the Devils Believe

I’ve been concerned lately with some of the language I’ve heard about Muslims in public and semi-public discourse. There is a growing pettiness and triumphalism about such comments — an attempt, seemingly, to relish every difficulty experienced by Muslim groups and to “put them in their place”, frequently in the name of Christianity.
Perhaps not [...]

Jane has a post up at the Episcopal Cafe about reclaiming the Sabbath, exploring issues like overscheduling and the ways we are more “of the world” than not when it comes to time. It’s a great post, definitely worth a read.
It’s not a silver bullet to solve this problem — far from it — [...]

Dwight asks about the books that have been formative for us in our faith journey. He points to some really good ones (and some geeky ones that only an expert in early 20th century liberal Protestantism would read!).
I mentioned a few in this response to Daisy’s question about Roman Catholic writers in a post [...]

This morning, Derek linked to an interesting article by Bruce Chilton on Elaine Pagels’ reading of the Nag Hammadi texts, which has become very influential in some Christian circles, liberal Protestantism especially.
Chilton does a good job of taking apart many of Pagels’ arguments — her contention that the gnostics represented an oppressed party in the [...]

Chris of Lutheran Zephyr has a post up playing with an interesting metaphor for the Church’s work of evangelism and formation. Rather than letting the framing of “seeker-friendly” dominate, he suggests we look at the Church in terms of “special exhibits” and the “permanent collection”. Just as museums draw folks with the more [...]

New York Magazine has a nice article about Martha Ainsworth, a New York woman in discernment about becoming a solitary in the Episcopal Church.
Martha Ainsworth rides a bus into Port Authority from New Jersey at least three times a week, twice for work and once on Sunday to attend Mass at St. John’s in the [...]

In response to the news that Seabury-Western Theological Seminary is suspending its residential M.Div., and taking into account general trends in the mainline, Christopher Evans has a long post up from before the weekend about the breakdown of old models of “doing church”. Being in some ways a human enterprise, the Church is always [...]

This may be another entry in the long list of churches I find beautiful and everyone else in my jurisdiction thinks are ugly, but I love this Vietnamese parish’s church building, Our Lady of Lavang in Houston, TX:

It is a nice, subtle example of inculturation in church architecture — and I have a devotion to [...]

Fr Martin Smith has a nice article up at the Episcopal Cafe about the prayer for peace often attributed to St Francis, which begins “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace…” He gives the actual history of the prayer, but points out that the truth about its origins doesn’t detract at all from the [...]

I had a rare opportunity last week to really sit down with an agnostic friend and talk about his objections to Christianity as he has experienced it. It’s not really a natural kind of evangelism for me — I’m more of the St Francis, “use words if necessary” type — but it was a [...]