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Christine Sine 7-15-2011

The other day I read some interesting statistics about how social media is shaping our lives . It is interesting to see the response to this and recognize the different ways in which we grapple with deluge of social media in relation to our faith. There are lots of resources emerging to help us maintain a strong and vibrant faith in the midst of this. I wanted to highlight a couple that I have found very useful

Nadia Bolz-Weber 7-13-2011

My favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings are the Ents -- an ancient race of giant living, talking, breathing trees in J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional land, Middle Earth. I have a little confession to make: Whenever I hear a reading from Isaiah 55 where it says, "The mountains and hills before you shall burst into song and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands," I always picture the Giant Ents from The Lord of the Rings. And then I picture these clapping trees from Isaiah holding little Hobbits in their branch arms in what ends up a willful conflation of Middle Earth and Major Prophet.

Christine Sine 7-12-2011

According to an article at GreenBiz.com, the company Unilever's push toward sustainability encountered a major obstacle in changing people's habits: the amount of time folks took to take a shower. Many of us not only shower too frequently (there is evidence that suggests that daily showers are not always good for us), but many of us also spend far too long in the shower.

Kurt Willems 7-01-2011

My friends and I can be stupid. Add explosives to the equation and the idiocy quotient increases exponentially. Such was the case every 4th of July during high school. A group of about 20 of my friends and I would get together to barbecue and play with illegal fireworks. At any unsuspected moment while taking a bite out of a burger, an M-80 could be lit under your seat, a sparkler thrown at your chest like a dart, or a mortar could be shot like a bazooka, catching bushes on fire. These chaotically stupid memories simultaneously serve as some of the most fun I can recall experiencing. So for me, Independence Day equals fun.

However, there's a deeper reality to this holiday. Only about three years ago did I realize that in celebrating Independence Day, I'm also glorifying the roots on which this nation was founded: an unjust war. The "rockets red glare" and "the bombs bursting in air" remind us not of the day God liberated the colonies, but of the moment in history when our forefathers stole the rhetoric of God from authentic Christianity to justify killing fellow Christians. There's two reasons I'm convinced that celebrating Independence Day celebrates an unjust war.

Julie Clawson 6-30-2011
"Blessed are the good-hearted, poets, and the dreamers. And all us crazy, holy, hungry ones who still believe in something better."

This hymn was originally used for the dedication of the 180 solar panels on the sanctuary of Limestone Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware where I am the co-pastor.
Brian McLaren 6-09-2011
Here are a few books I've been reading and would like to recommend to you for the coming summer:

Troy Jackson 5-31-2011
This has been a difficult year in Ohio.
Jeannie Choi 5-20-2011

Here's a little round up of links from around the Web you may have missed this week:

  • One in four children in the United States are in poverty.
  • Ben&Jerry's Ben Cohen talks to Sojourners about ice cream, oreos, and military spending.
  • Female college graduates are getting paid less than their male peers.
  • Is Capitalism's popularity waning?
  • If your house was burning, what would you take with you? (My house almost burned down once. I had time to grab my computer, family photos, and a signed copy of Deadeye Dick.)
  • Have you ever been to Paris?
Nadia Bolz-Weber 5-20-2011
Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's kind of weird how we've named Thomas, "Doubting" Thomas. We don't give the other characters in the New Testament little nicknames ...
Debra Dean Murphy 5-11-2011
I can appreciate how difficult it must be to craft a good commencement address. The need to avoid well-worn pieties while also offering something of the best-distilled wisdom of the ages.
Gary M. Burge 5-10-2011

Once again last week the pages of the New York Times was graced with an ad published by David Horowitz's Freedom Center, one of those websites you visit and immediately begin to rethink the sanity of published discourse on the Web.

Charles Gutenson 5-09-2011
For the longest time, when Christians have thought about political engagement, they have often begun the discussion with the question: What is the biblical role of government?
Nadia Bolz-Weber 4-26-2011
I've often wondered what people in America think when they actually read the story of Jesus rising from the dead for the first time.
Kent Annan 4-25-2011

I just watched a 60 Minutes expose on Greg Mortenson, co-author of Three Cups of Tea and co-founder of the nonprofit the Central Asia Institute. Watching this news story that accused Mortenson of fabricating key stories in his book, lacking organizational/financial transparency and effectiveness, and receiving "excessive" personal benefits from his organization felt like a punch in the gut, even if it's of the too familiar heroes-come-crashing-down variety.

It must have felt like a punch to many. None of us like to give our hard-earned pennies or dollars or peace prize money to someone who betrays our confidence.

I felt it in my gut, too, because Mortenson and I have a lot in common. We've both published two memoirs about our experiences and work for education in the developing world -- he in Afghanistan, and me in Haiti. We both travel to speak about our work -- albeit he on a much grander, best-selling-er scale than me. Once I stood for half an hour in a book line to talk with him for two minutes and he seemed touchingly humble and friendly.

Ken Fong 4-20-2011
Our ability to love others who have sinned against us flows out of our real experience of Jesus forgiving our own sins.
Rose Marie Berger 4-19-2011

The Afghan Youth for Peace held a candle-lighting prayer vigil to remember all of their family who have died as a result of aggression from the U.S. war, the Taliban, local war lords, and terrorist groups.

"Are their no other options for the people?" they ask.

Aaron Taylor 4-13-2011

A friend of mine pointed out on his Facebook page that 45.9 percent of Americans blame Muslims for the Christian immigration out of the Holy Land, while only 7.4 percent of Americans cite Israeli restrictions as contributing to Arab Christian immigration.

Chris LaTondresse 3-01-2011

"Farewell Rob Bell." With this three word tweet John Piper -- senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist church in Minneapolis, Minnesota and elder statesman of the neo-reform stream of American Christianity -- triggered an online firestorm over the weekend.

Brian McLaren 2-28-2011
The "What Would Jesus Cut?" campaign, launched by Jim Wallis and the good people of Sojourners, assumes that