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Wild Goose Festival Puts Spotlight on Visual Arts
Artist Ted Lyddon Hatten’s work reflects the spiritual stories of birds in “Ornitheology.” RNS photo courtesy Ted Lyddon Hatten.
Words and music are the stock-in-trade at most Christian festivals, but the Wild Goose Festival is adding another component: the visual arts.
Run River North and Jars of Clay will headline the musical offerings.
But as with last year, the festival is making an intentional shift to include more visual art; more than 13 artists and arts groups will present their work.
This year’s theme of “Living Liberation” will attempt to challenge conventional Christian art with liturgical painting, a collaborative mural project, experiential storytelling, and an exhibit called Faithmarks that explores spirituality and tattoos.
In WikiWorship, Church Members Help Edit the Sermon
The crowd sings hymns and prays during WikiWorship. Photo: Amanda Greene/WilmingtonFAVS Via RNS.
Turning part of the message over to church members is the concept behind a new worship model called WikiWorship.
Yes, that’s wiki as in Wikipedia.
The week before each WikiWorship, participants submit questions on religion, ethics, life, or God via the mission’s website. Then Chryst chooses one to spur discussion at each service.
Seminary Buys Robot to Study the Ethics of Technology
A humanoid NAO robot (pronounced ‘now’). Photo courtesy of Southern Evangelical Seminary
Seminaries have a reputation for being late adapters when it comes to modern technology.
Southern Evangelical Seminary & Bible College in Matthews, N.C., wants to change that. On Friday it introduced a humanoid NAO robot (pronounced ‘now’).
The 22-year-old Christian apologetics school claims it’s the first in the world to use a robot to study the ethics of emerging technologies.
The white robot with an orange cap from the French company Aldebaran Robotics stands 23 inches high and includes voice and facial recognition and full mobility. It translates text to speech in seven languages. The robot retails for $16,000, but Southern got an end-of-the-year deal at $9,300.
NC Pastor to Kick Off Second Year of Demonstrations
The Rev. William J. Barber II consults with church member Shyrl Hinnant Uzzell. RNS photo by Yonat Shimron
North Carolina’s weekly protests against Republican-backed legislative initiatives last year brought thousands of people to the state Capitol in Raleigh each Monday chanting, “Forward together, not one step back.”
Now the movement is ready to reprise its demonstrations, which recall the tactics of the civil rights era.
The Rev. William J. Barber II and his Moral Mondays team are making final preparations for the kickoff event, dubbed the Moral March, scheduled for Saturday. Barber hopes it will be bigger than the Selma march for voting rights in 1965 that drew 25,000 people.
Kwanzaa Radio Program Continues 20-Year Tradition of Instilling Values
“A Season’s Griot” show host Madafo Lloyd Wilson and storyteller Joyce Grear Amanda Greene/WilmingtonFAVS.com Via RNS
Kwanzaa began Wednesday but two veteran storytellers began planning for the weeklong celebration of the Western African diaspora back in October.
That’s when Wilmington, North Carolina, storyteller Joyce Grear and Madafo Lloyd Wilson, host of A Season’s Griot, met to decide what story Grear should read this year.
They sat in the wide, barren conference room between radio studios at WHQR Public Radio, where A Season’s Griot has been produced for more than two decades as the only nationally syndicated Kwanzaa radio show in the country.
N.C. Clergy Seek Release of Senate Report on Torture
Senator Richard Burr photo courtesy US Senate [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Citing the need for transparency in the U.S. record on human rights, nearly 200 clergy and religious leaders from North Carolina are seeking the public release of a 6,000-page Senate intelligence report on U.S. torture of terrorism detainees after 9/11.
The letter, dated Aug. 27 and released to the media on Thursday, was sent from the North Carolina Council of Churches in Raleigh to Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The letter, signed by 18 bishops, including the leaders of both of the state’s Catholic dioceses, stated that in light of conflicts in Syria and around the Middle East, transparency on U.S. torture practices was needed.
What One Businessman Learned About Success from Trappist Monks
The monks of Mepkin Abbey. Photo courtesy RNS.
Driving through the Spanish moss-draped gates of the Mepkin Abbey Trappist monastery in Moncks Corner, S.C., businessman August Turak felt as if he had just lost a whole lot of weight.
Not physical weight, but the weight of emotional and spiritual burdens.
After a corporate career with companies like MTV, Turak sold two successful software companies for $150 million, but shattering his ankle in a skydiving accident “brought me face to face with my own mortality.”
Humanists Find Ways to Say ‘I Do’ Without God
Amanda Holowaty holds a photo of she and her husband Mike Holowaty on their wedding day in May 2012. Photo courtesy RNS.
Amanda Holowaty didn’t need God to get married. She just needed her husband Mike.
When the Wilmington atheist couple decided to join their lives a year ago, they knew they wanted a secular wedding celebrant, but their families weren’t so sure. Her family is Methodist and his is “generally spiritual.” And they worried about even telling Mike’s grandmother, who is Eastern Orthodox. So they found a wedding celebrant ordained through the Humanist Society, Han Hills, who allowed their family members to read a spiritual poem.
“Nobody seemed to notice that we didn’t mention God,” Holowaty said. “People came up afterward and said it was one of the best weddings they’d seen.”
North Carolina Minorities Remain Worried After Religion Bill is Pulled
Minority faiths remain nervous over the attempt to regulate a N.C. state religion. Lori Howard / Shutterstock
WILMINGTON, N.C. — A resolution to allow North Carolina to defy the Constitution and establish a state-sanctioned religion may be dead in the state capitol, but minority faiths say there’s more than enough reason to remain nervous.
Some worry about the implications the bill has for North Carolina, a majority Protestant state with growing Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist populations.
Manzoor Cheema, a Raleigh resident and board member of the Triangle Interfaith Alliance, said he believes the resolution should be a wake-up call.
“I think this is a very disturbing development; very bad for our state. In my opinion, as a Muslim, a minority community member and immigrant from Pakistan, I believe that separation of church and state is fundamental and grants us many freedoms,” he said.
“But it’s a blessing in disguise to mobilize the interfaith community in North Carolina.”
On 200th Birthday, There’s No ‘Bah Humbug’ for Charles Dickens
Photo: Christmas tree, © Jennifer Nickert / Shutterstock.com
“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.”
– Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol.
WILMINGTON, N.C. — ‘Tis the season for “Bah Humbug” and “God bless us every one,” especially as the world caps off a year of celebrations for the 200th anniversary of the birth of novelist Charles Dickens.
Starting this weekend as the Christmas season begins with Advent, cities will transform their streets to Victorian English landscapes with strolling carolers and stage different productions of Dickens' most famous yuletide work, A Christmas Carol.
Religious Groups Join Forces Against Sex Trafficking
MaLisa Johnson, the founder of the Centre of Redemption. RNS photo by Amanda Greene/Wilmington FAVS
The difference between sex trafficking and freelance prostitution is who has the control and who is keeping the money, said prosecutor Lindsey Roberson, an assistant district attorney in New Hanover County. If a girl or a woman is being forced or coerced by a pimp to perform sex acts without monetary gain, that’s trafficking.
The North Carolina Coalition to Combat Human Trafficking ranks the state among the top 10 states for the problem. North Carolina’s three major highways connect much of the East Coast, and the state has a large transient military and farmworker population, and international seaports in the Cape Fear region.
In May, Roberson helped start a deferred prosecution pilot program for first-time offenders with prostitution charges, partnering with a local rape crisis center.
As a Christian, Roberson is also on the board of a new faith-based effort called the Centre of Redemption, which is scheduled to open in December to help pregnant teens and teen moms who are also trafficking victims.
North Carolina Approves Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
The sign outside the polling station at Devon Park United Methodist Church exemplified this state's struggle with a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
"A true marriage is male and female and God," the church marquee read. All around the church sign were small campaign signs that read: "Vote Against Constitutional Amendment" and "Amendment One Harms Children Vote Against."
The amendment was approved Tuesday (May 8) by 61 percent of voters, with some counties endorsing it with more than 80 percent of the vote. Only seven counties voted against it.
"In some sense North Carolinians are voting against their own beliefs," according to the Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling firm said. "Fifty-three percent of voters in the state support either gay marriage or civil unions, yet a majority also support the amendment that would ban both."
Man Spends 12 Months Practicing 12 Different Religions, Finds Peace at Year’s End
Religious crossroads, Ryan DeBerardinis/Shutterstock.com
Andrew Bowen sat yoga-style in his armchair, absent-mindedly fingering a set of Muslim prayer beads in his left hand as he talked about 2011 -- his year of conversion.
But he's not Muslim. In fact, the 29-year-old Lumberton resident doesn't call himself by any of the 12 faiths he practiced for a month at a time last year.
Not Hindu (January). Not Baha'i (February). Not Zoroastrian (March). Not Jewish (April). Not Buddhist (May). Not agnostic (June). Not Mormon (July). Not Muslim (August). Not Sikh (September). Not Wiccan (October). Not Jain (November). And not Catholic (December).
Finding faith in God again was not Bowen's aim. This young father of two was looking for faith in humanity.
Both Sides Gearing Up for Same-Sex Marriage Fight in North Carolina
(Image by Laurin Rinder/Shutterstock.)
WILMINGTON, N.C. — As the only Southern state without a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage, North Carolina is the next battleground, with religious groups on both sides bracing for a high-stakes fight on May 8.
Against a recent string of gay-marriage victories in California, Washington state and Maryland, North Carolinians will be asked to vote on a constitutional amendment on May 8, the same day as the state Republican primary.
Same-sex marriage has been illegal in the Tar Heel State since 1996; Minnesota also has a marriage amendment planned for a vote in November.
"Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state," the proposed amendment reads.