Community

Tom Andrews 7-05-2011

We cannot allow the history of a brutal genocide to repeat itself in Sudan, nor denial and inaction to repeat itself in Washington, D.C., but both are happening at this very moment

Lonnie Ellis 6-30-2011
The youngest person in a crowd of teenagers and young adults at the Dream Act Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday was an 8-year-old girl.
Jim Wallis 6-30-2011

My iPhone died and I didn't even care. A cooler full of water and ice was dumped on my head, which soaked not only me, but also my phone. My older son Luke's Little League team, called the Nationals, had just won the Majors championship in Northwest Little League.

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."

Claire Lorentzen 6-28-2011
Scott Kinder-Pyle is a Presbyterian pastor in Spokane, Washington, and the featured poet in Sojourners' July issue.
Places and spaces become holy because they are locations where the human and the divine meet.
Steve Holt 6-24-2011
Sitting in church the other night, I thought about Jackson Helms.

Jim Wallis 6-23-2011

Last evening, President Obama made his long-awaited announcement on beginning withdrawal of the 103,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Leroy Barber 6-22-2011

In one of my last blog posts on God's Politics, I had some pretty strong opinions on the negative comments made by Bernard Hopkins about Donovan McNabb implying that McN

Theresa Cho 6-21-2011
After posting a blog about my observations of a dying church, there were comments gi
Jason Byassee 6-15-2011

When trying to make sense of the changes that new media have brought to us, we can use either supplementary or substitutionary logic. With supplementary logic, Facebook et al. extend the range of our embodied relationships; with substitutionary logic, social media replace them. Those who want to use social media to enhance their churches' outreach implicitly use supplementary logic. Those who want to worship online and don't want to change out of their pajamas or meet other people in their messy particularity ... well, you get the idea.

A recent trip to New York City for a first meeting of the New Media Project Research Fellows reminded me of the superiority of supplementary to substitutionary logic. This happened because the neighborhood around Union Theological Seminary is so deliciously, specifically, embodiedly particular. Union itself is a marvel: its gothic architecture makes it unmistakable that this is a place with history. Niebuhr taught here; Bonhoeffer smoked and worried and decided to go home here; James Cone and Christopher Morse teach here; Serene Jones leads here. The neighborhood extends this particularity; the Jewish Theological Seminary, down Seminary Row, has a glorious crest above its door: "And the bush was not consumed." A tunnel under Union leads you to the grandeur of Riverside Church, where Fosdick and Forbes thundered. Go a few blocks south and east, and you're at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the largest interior church space in North America. The morning I visited, the light shone blue through the rose window, filling the clerestory with incandescent beauty. The chapel at Columbia University, with its stained glass above the altar depicting St. Paul preaching on Mars Hill, is a perfect image for situated Christian truth vis-à-vis the gods on campuses and in Manhattan.

Theresa Cho 6-13-2011

I recently wrote a blog about how to kill a dying church, asking questions about what to do with so many churches dying. I think the challenge is recognizing the signs that a church is dying. The problem is that churches tend to wither, which is a slow, gradual, and often subtle process. It is difficult to pinpoint when in the withering process it is time to take action, to make changes, and to make some vital decisions. While there are many reasons for a church dying, here are some practical observations that I have noticed in my experience. This list is certainly not exhaustive. It is also a list that my congregation has personally had to face, so I give examples of how my congregation has addressed these issues.

Phil Haslanger 6-13-2011
Jesus never said anything about collective bargaining. He never called for the continuation of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers.
Julie Clawson 6-10-2011
I was at the pool with the kids recently and couldn't help but overhear a very loud and opinionated conversation happening near me.
The Hebrew scriptures recount time and again how God blesses the earth with enough provision and food for its inhabitants.
Jim Wallis 6-09-2011

This Sunday is Pentecost. For 50 days, a group of 120 followers of Jesus waited. Their teacher, for whom they had left all they had, was now gone. Judas, one of their own, betrayed their master and then killed himself. The comforter they had been promised had not yet come.

Any discussion of shared authority and responsibility between men and women must start with the importance Jesus placed on unity among his followers.
Jeannie Choi 6-03-2011

Awesome people. Vegetarians. Going mute. Here's a little round up of links from around the Web you may have missed this week:

  • Are you a new vegetarian? Some tips.
  • Kathy Khang shares more about her experience with depression.
  • Don't you sometimes wish you could just hit the mute button?

"Pentecost is God's 'show-and-tell' lesson that after the incarnation no one people has a purchase on the fullness of God. No single denomination, no one race, no one ethnicity, and no one socioeconomic group mediates God's fullness to the world. Diversity is an essential attribute of a Spirit-filled church (Acts 2:8,18)."

Linda Alvarez 6-01-2011
I love that the Wild Goose Festival is described as festival of justice, spirituality, music, and art.
Theresa Cho 6-01-2011
I find it discomforting that the Lord instructs someone to wage war and therefore reasoning that God-sanctioned war is justifiable even though as Christians we are called to be peacemakers in the w