Over the past few weeks, Christians have written Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley asking him to stop the immoral practices that plague the state’s criminal justice institutions. This incredible outcry from the faith community demonstrates their outrage at stories of people in poverty spending days, weeks, and months in jail over their inability to pay fees and fines to private companies contracted to administer parts of Alabama’s system.
When contacted by Sojourners for a response to the thousands of messages received from people of faith about this issue, Jeremy King, spokesman for Gov. Bentley’s office responded, "We can review this issue and move forward from there."
I grew up thinking a lot of things were evil: cursing, smoking, Texas A&M, Democrats.
But one thing that never fell into the “damned” category was yoga. I guess it just didn't come up. So I was more than a little confused when a few years ago, pastors across the religiously affiliated spectrum started condemning my workout class of choice.
Seattle megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll has said multiple times yoga is evil, concluding, “A faithful Christian can no more say they are practicing yoga for Jesus than they can say they are committing adultery for Jesus.” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler said — and was later lambasted for it — that embrace of yoga is contradictory to Christian commitment. Even the guy at the Vatican who does exorcisms said yoga is the “work of the devil.”
To which my initial response — to quote the Dude — is … well, y’know, that’s just, like your opinion, man. (Er, I mean men. White pastorly men.)
New music from :
- Mary Chapin Carpenter (with James Taylor),
- Sixpence None the Richer,
- Matisyahu,
- Old Crow Medicine Show,
- The Avett Brothers,
- and Band of Horses.
"Look! On the mountains the feet of one who brings good tidings, who proclaims peace! Celebrate your festivals, O Judah, fulfil your vows, for never again shall the wicked invade you; they are utterly cut off. A shatterer has come up against you. Guard the ramparts; watch the road; gird your loins; collect all your strength. (For the Lord is restoring the majesty of Jacob, as well as the majesty of Israel, though ravagers have ravaged them and ruined their branches.) - Nahum 1:15-2:2
“We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry.” - Brian McLaren from A Generous Orthodoxy
God, send rain to the areas in our country that have been burdened by drought. Let the water replenish the ground and rejuvenate all life. Help us to care for our land in as many ways as possible. Amen.
I was driving when it occurred to me that it has been 20 years since my old friend Geoff Sanders was murdered.
I was headed home from work, public radio blasting even though I really wasn’t listening, the rosy beginnings of sunset blooming over the abandoned warehouses of gritty New York Avenue, the route I take every day.
Then a piece came on the radio — I’ve tried in vain to find it since. How my memory fails me — about a mentoring program for young inner-city men set in the context of a wave of gang violence that spread across Chicago this summer.
Even if you can’t save everybody, the director was saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, it’s worth it if you just save one.
Funeral services will be held today for the six Sikhs killed at a Wisconsin temple last Sunday. The bodies of the deceased will later be cremated — but their souls will live on, Sikh tradition teaches.
Sikh scriptures don't dwell on what happens after death. Instead, the faith focuses on earthly duties, such as honoring God, performing charity and promoting justice.
"The afterlife is not a primary concern," said Gurinder Singh Mann, a religious studies professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara. "It's a very life-affirming belief system."
Still, like many religions, Sikhism includes intimations of immortality.
Founded in 15th-century India, Sikhism was born in the same cradle as Hinduism and Buddhism, both of which posit reincarnation. Like those faiths, Sikhism teaches that the goal is to escape from the cycle of death and rebirth.
But unlike Hindus and Buddhists, Sikhs believe that humans can't liberate themselves through meditation and virtuous living — only God's grace offers freedom from rebirth.
"We don't think that, 'Well, I've done these wonderful things, I get a ticket to heaven,'" said Mann. "That's a divine decision."
A group of faith leaders Thursday exhorted Americans to do more than pray for better times.
Representing seven different faith traditions, many advocated a period of public mourning after a week that saw a shooting rampage at a Sikh temple and a suspicious fire at a Missouri mosque.
"It is my hope that this is more than a time to express personal sorrows," said Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
"Our most concrete rejection of violence occurs when we engage the neighbor, the neighbor who is new in our community, the neighbor who worships differently than we," he said.
Catholic sisters gathered in St. Louis for their annual assembly on Thursday intensified discussions aimed at thwarting a Vatican takeover of their group, but hanging over the meeting was an even larger existential question: Do the nuns have a future?
The viability issue is central to the dispute between Rome and the nuns that has riveted Catholics and dominated this year's meeting of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The steering group represents most of the 56,000 nuns in religious orders in the United States.
The Vatican announced in April that a team of bishops would take control of the LCWR in order to make the nuns hew more closely and publicly to orthodox teachings on sexuality and theology. The sisters are expected to deliver their first formal reply to the takeover on Friday.
A key justification for Rome's action was the argument that vocations to more progressive women's religious communities are in free fall: In 1965 there were 180,000 sisters in religious life, more than three times today's number. The decline is especially acute in orders that belong to the LCWR.