Continue reading Hard-Boiled Scrambled Cartoon Egg Salad . . .
Category Archives: Ecumenical & Interfaith
”All God’s Critters Got a Place In the Choir”–But Sometimes They have to Make (or Change) It
”All God’s Critters Got a Place In the Choir.”
And being in the choir is work.
I’m not much for singing gospel songs; but Bill Staines, who wrote this one, was more of a folkie, and his tune, “All God’s Critters” is more folk than (Lord help us) “praise” music. But whatever the genre, I’m more interested in its theology, because I agree with it.
All God’s critters got a place in the choir,
Some sing low, some sing higher,
Some sing out loud on the telephone wire.
And some just clap their hands, or paws,
or anything they got now . . . . Continue reading ”All God’s Critters Got a Place In the Choir”–But Sometimes They have to Make (or Change) It
Two Clashing Religious Views: An Asian American Apostate Speaks; and Anglican & Catholic Internal Splits: Big Crashes Ahead? Two Perspectives
[NOTE: Anybody, especially a church bureaucrat or official, who tells you that Big Christianity, Catholic & Protestant, is not cracking apart over LGBT and associated issues, is either terribly under-informed, or putting you on. Such happy-or “We (& Jesus)-can work-it-out” talk is red-flag stuff, a warning that either their competence or their candor, or both, is in serious, maybe fatal doubt.
The two articles below are emblematic of this ongoing tumult: one is by a self-described “Asian American apostate” from American evangelicalism. The other is by a writer for a journal that has long advocated for purges of open LGBTQ Catholics and Anglicans, along with their straight supporters.
They are offered here as continuing food for thought.]
A scathing critique of the evangelical culture at a Christian university in pre-Trump America.
By Kathryn Post — April 18, 2023
(RNS) — R. Scott Okamoto still believed in Jesus the first time he strode onto the campus of Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian school in Southern California, for a job interview in 1998. Fifteen years later, he left without a job or his faith.
But in his debut book, “Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University,” Okamoto explains that his experience granted him more clarity and sanity about religion and Christianity in particular than he had enjoyed before. Continue reading Two Clashing Religious Views: An Asian American Apostate Speaks; and Anglican & Catholic Internal Splits: Big Crashes Ahead? Two Perspectives
Exploring Why & How More Americans Are Losing Their Religion
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NOTE: The data is, I think, irrefutable: measured by the “Three Bs” of religion — Belief, Behavior & Belonging — the USA is steadily “losing” its religion(s), and becoming a more secular, nonreligious place.
I’m a good example of this, yet also a bad one. Good, in that I “lost” the religion I was raised with (Catholicism); and bad, in that I didn’t really “lose,” but left it. And I didn’t then turn secular; instead I took up a new one (new to me), Quakerism. Continue reading Exploring Why & How More Americans Are Losing Their Religion
