Blog Posts By Cathleen Falsani

On Saturday, November 12, at 8 p.m. ET, CBS News and National Journal will present a nationally broadcast debate focused on national security issues. There are several ways for you to participate both before and during the debate.Our friends at WAND (Women's Action for New Directions) have created a primer about how you can submit questions to the candidates before the debate.Let your voice be heard! 

What's better than a piping hot, non-fat, sugar-free pumpkin latte right about now?Sipping a piping hot, non-fat, sugar-free pumpkin latte while listening to Kristin Chenoweth sing "Taylor the Latte Boy," that's what.Go grab your latte. Kristin and Taylor will be waiting for you inside when you get back.Warning: Sing-along flash mobs may ensue. Use headphones as a precautionary measure.

In the photograph, Dr. Graham is seated in a wooden chair, dressed casually in dungaree-blue slacks, an open-collar shirt and red sportcoat, and he looks straight ahead, his face in profile to the camera lens. “America’s Pastor,” as he is often called, is looking into the distance, to a place out of frame – his gaze fixed on something we cannot see.I cherish that photograph of Dr. Graham for myriad reasons, but perhaps most importantly because it reminds me of the gift of vision – spiritual vision – to see things that are not of the physical realm. A sacred and holy perspective. An orientation of the heart and mind that looks beyond itself, to the More.A vision of faith – the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen – and colored by grace, mercy and divine love.Dr. Graham has such a vision – a mighty gift he has shared with the world for more than six decades. A gift he imparted to me as a child, sitting in the balcony of an old auditorium at Yale University in my native Connecticut in the mid-1980s, watching him preach during one of his famous crusades.

"God helps those who help themselves," is, unfortunately for Mr. Carney, NOT in the Bible.Rather it's an oft-quoted aphorism that sounds like it should be in the Bible but isn't. A "phantom scripture," if you will.

On Sunday (10/30), the Anglican Bishop of London, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Richard Chartres, met with Occupy London protesters who have encamped for several weeks now on the ground of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in an ongoing attempt to get the demonstrators to leave church grounds. Chartres wants the Occupiers to vacate cathedral property and stopped short, in an interview with the BBC yesterday, of saying he would oppose their forcible removal. Other British clergy, however, are rallying behind the demonstrators, saying they would physically (and spiritually) surround protesters at St. Paul's with a circle of prayer or "circle of protection."

One of my most vivid childhood memories of Halloween 1977, the year my family moved to a new town in Connecticut right after the school year had begun. I don't recall what my costume was, but I do remember going door-to-door with my father, meeting new neighbors and collecting a heavy bag of candy, as the suburban warren of Cape Cods and manicured lawns morphed into an other-worldly fairyland.I was 7 years old and the new kid on the block, so when the cover of darkness fell at sunset, I hadn't a clue where I was. As my father deftly navigated our way home in the crisp autumn night, it felt like he had performed a magic trick. When the morning came, I couldn't believe that our adventure the night before had been on these same streets. To my young imagination (and heart) it felt as if we had been walking through Narnia or Rivendell rather than a sleepy New England suburb.A few years after that, my family stopped celebrating Halloween. We had become born-again Christians and our Southern Baptist church frowned on the practice. Halloween, I was taught, was an occult holiday (or maybe even Satanic!) and good Christians should have nothing to do with it.

SMILEY: I'm still going to finish my point. You're right to go after Stanley O'Neal. I know you didn't mean to do this. I don't want to believe you meant to do this, but Stanley O'Neal, there are four or five black CEOs in this country. You choose a guy at Merrill Lynch to make him the poster guy for all the folks on Wall Street. O'REILLY: Oh Tavis knock it off with the black business, will you? Oh stop.

The church calendar is tastefully rendered, thanks to a strategically-placed bag of golf clubs, banjo, laptop computer and what appears to be a large-mouth bass. The eldest pin-up dude is a retired minister who says there is a "certain elegance" to the older male form.

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to begin hearing oral arguments this week in one of the most important church-state cases in decades. In Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the court will consider whether a Lutheran school in Michigan is subject to a federal law banning discrimination based on a disability.

In his column last week, Sojourners chief Jim Wallis talked about his frustration with the perennial misuse of the word "evangelical" by various media to describe folks and ideas that, in his view, and that of many of us who self-describe as evangelicals, don't bear any resemblance to what we understand that term to actually mean.Below is a compilation of recent media reports where the word "evangelical" is invoked. When you read these, evangelical brothers and sisters, do you recognize yourself in how the word is used and defined? Or does it ring false to you and your understanding of what "evangelical" really and truly means?

September 18 was National Back to Church Sunday. It's OK. I missed it, too.

The Slavery Footprint campaign launched Thursday (Sept. 22), which also happened to have been the 149th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, with the goal of personalizing "the issue of modern slavery by providing people with an assessment of just how much their lifestyle depends on forced labor -- and the steps they can immediately take to help end it."By following this LINK I was able to plug in some basic information about myself and my lifestyle -- where do I live, do I own or rent, how many children do I have, have many diamonds/leather shoes/electronic gizmos do I own, what are my eating habits, what's in my medicine cabinet, etc., -- and in just a few minutes received the upsetting news that, according to the Slavery Footprint campaigns diagnostics, 52 slaves "work for me."

Troy Anthony Davis died at 11:08 p.m. EST, Sept. 21,2011.

Sojourners statement regarding "No More Deaths" report on U.S. Border Patrol abuses: "As a Christian organization, Sojourners believe that all people, regardless of national origin, are made in the "image of God" and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We also believe that immigrants are our neighbors and that all life is a sacred gift from God. No More Deaths' report on abuse of immigrants in short-term custody is a chilling reminder that we have a long way to go to affirm a consistent ethic of life in our nation. The overcrowding, physical and psychological abuse, exposure to unsanitary conditions, and denial of food and water to immigrants held in custody of the U.S. Border Patrol must end. As Christians, we insist that all immigrants should be treated fairly and with respect, no matter what side of the border they live on. There are no excuses for such practices to continue, and we call on the Obama Administration to seek accountability for every documented case of abuse by the Border Patrol. The United States should lead by example in all measures of human rights. These numbers offer a stark contrast between the nation we claim to be, built and made better by immigrants, and the nation we are."

If you're anything like me, reading this brief entry from Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress.org titled, "Scalia says there's nothing unconstitutional about executing the innocent," will no doubt do more to raise your blood pressure than the afternoon latte you were just contemplating.

The study by Los Angeles-based Relief International found that about 10 percent of the estimated 15 million women who live in Iraq are widows. Among them, 59 percent have lost their husbands during the U.S.-led war.

They call me ..."God Girl."* And I'll be your new tour guide here at God's Politics. Some of you may know me by my more official byline, Cathleen Falsani. I've been a contributing editor and columnist for Sojourners Magazine for several years now, writing a column every other month called "Godstuff" and also have contributed from time to time to this'a'here blog.

Last Mother's Day, the Violence Prevention Coalition of Los Angeles ran a gun buy-back event where people could exchange firearms for grocery coupons -- no questions asked. The VPC collected more than 2,700 guns that day. Now some of them are being "up-cycled" -- melted down and re-purposed -- as works of art called "Peace Angels."

"OK to all those attacking Tavis and Dr. West and me for hosting the Poverty tour, can you get off your Hating a second to look at todays latest report: POVERTY is at its highest record in American History!!! People are Dying out here! Don't care what you think of Tavis, Cornel or me, but PLEASE PLEASE care about our Brothers and Sisters who have been made to feel invisible and disposable!" -- Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the Faith Community of St. Sabina, a Roman Catholic parish on Chicago's South Side, in a posting on his Facebook page Wednesday morning.

Don't believe most of what you'll hear about Kevin Smith's new movie, Red State. It is not an angry tirade against religion, nor is it an attack on Christianity guised as a horror flick laden with gratuitous violence. Smith has described Red State as a horror film, and it is that, but not in the conventional Nightmare on Elm Street iteration. There is violence for sure, but nothing approaching the unrelenting bloodbath of, say, The Passion of the Christ.

Some clever folks have created a magnificent "mash-up" of Sesame Street's resident pastry enthusiast, Cookie Monster, and the iconoclastic performer Tom Waits' song "God's Away on Business" from his 2002 album, "Blood Money." (Waits' song also appeared in the 2005 film, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.)

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama spent Sunday, the 10th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, by visiting each of the attack sites in New York City, Washington,