Patheos/On Faith

Do we need Advent more than Christmas?

Mark D. Roberts — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:34:43 EST

Hope is in short supply today. Yes, the latest unemployment numbers are a bit better and the Dow has been up recently, but I haven’t seen any massive outbreak of hope. Have you?

A new dawn of hope doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, either. Our national debt has grown so large that it’s almost incomprehensible. The European economy is more messed up than ours. The vaunted Arab Spring is looking more and more like a stepping stone for the advance of Islamist regimes, thus further destabilizing the Middle East. Iran will soon have the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Not much hope here.

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‘The Little Drummer Boy,’ according to Bieber

Brian Kirk — Thu, 1 Dec 2011 16:41:57 EST

I used to have some fun with the teens in my church youth groups by challenging them to find the story of the little drummer boy in the gospels. Of course, their search was in vain as it’s a story from recent Christian tradition but not scripture. In contrast, pop singer Justin Bieber’s new version of “Drummer Boy” is much easier to find these days. It is featured on his new album Under the Mistletoe , which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 chart last week. In addition to the fact that this is the first time in the history of the Billboard 200 that a male singer topped the charts with a Christmas album, Bieber is donating a portion of the album’s proceeds to his Believe charity, which benefits such organizations as Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Teenage Cancer Trust.

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Tim Tebow: Evidence of things unseen

Patton Dodd — Thu, 1 Dec 2011 16:00:00 EST

When a football game comes down to a final field goal attempt, television producers typically keep their cameras trained on the kicker-that stretching and pacing sapling of a man in a towering forest of football players. Placekicker shots have become iconic in football because when the cameras are focused on the kickers, everything is on the line.

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A veteran, professor and priest

Pat McNamara — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:35:22 EST

Father Francis P. Duffy and the Fighting 69th

With Veterans Day here, this week’s column features a priest whose statue millions pass daily in Times Square, a World War I Chaplain featured in the 1940 movie The Fighting 69th. Professor, pastor and soldier, apologist and ecumenist, Francis Duffy was, one historian writes, “the best-known priest in New York.” A transplanted Canadian, he became the quintessential New Yorker: in love with the city, and living in the very heart of it.

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At Sukkot, internalizing God

Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:18:58 EST

The holiday time is a process and experience of internalization of God as the core and goal of our lives, from the level of intellect to the level of emotion to the level of action.

I would like to share with you something I saw in an email in honor of the new year from the always insightful and inspiring Rabbi Avrohom Lipszyc of North Miami, Florida.

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Rosh Hashanah, a check-up for the soul

Talia Davis — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:45:32 EST

This is always a busy time of year. Most non-Jews notice when their Jewish neighbors, colleagues, and schoolmates are missing from view for many days in a row, several times over the next couple of months. As Jews, this is one of our big holiday seasons. In rapid succession we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah.

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10 questions worth asking about a candidate’s faith

Robert Crosby — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:31:21 EST

Bill Keller’s column in the New York Times, Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith, exhibits more anxiety than journalistic curiosity. Keller writes of his fear that one of the Republican hopefuls may be “a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed.” Would not a less reactionary dose of simple journalistic interest be a better place to begin the dialogue? If readership and ratings are the goal, I suppose not.

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Why I’m attending World Youth Day

Tim Muldoon — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:47:42 EST

In our pilgrimage to World Youth Day, we seek a deeper and a greater hope -- one that does not simply trade power from one generation to the next.

Are we not perhaps seeing once again, in the light of current history, that no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown? —Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 15

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Shavuot: Judaism’s monument to time, history

Miles Hartog — Tue, 7 Jun 2011 09:47:03 EST

Shavuot is both an agricultural festival as well the commemoration of the time the Jewish people received the Torah (the word of God) at Mount Sinai, following the Exodus from Egypt.

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Stephen Colbert: Catholicism’s best pitch man?

Matt Emerson — Thu, 2 Jun 2011 15:22:14 EST

The day after Easter, in a small studio in New York City, in the span of three minutes and eleven seconds, a man mentioned a mitre, a monk, a chasuble, a reliquary, votive candles, the Sacraments, celibacy, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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Harold Camping, mainstream Christians and the Rapture

Kyle Roberts, Adam Rao — Wed, 25 May 2011 15:05:28 EST

In the weeks leading up to May 21, Christians everywhere denounced Harold Camping’s prediction that the world was coming to an imminent end. Many did so on the basis of Jesus’ words in Mark 13, that “no one knows about that day or hour” except the father. What remains troubling, however, is that many of those denouncements suggested that Camping was wrong about the date, but not necessarily wrong about the event itself. Maybe it’s high time to reconsider the theology behind the very idea of the rapture. For some time, theologians (such as N.T. Wright and Jürgen Moltmann) have been pressing for a de-raptured eschatology to permeate the general Christian consciousness.

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Why May 21, 2011 isn’t the end of the world

James F. McGrath — Fri, 20 May 2011 14:02:30 EST

The Internet is alive with discussion of the Rapture, which Harold Camping’s most recent prediction says will occur this coming Saturday. Most people, and I think even most Christians, are at best skeptical.

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Why do we need Holy Week?

Elizabeth Scalia — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:25:00 EST

A few years ago, a harried day of motherhood and housewifery left me drained enough to seek out confession. I shot my confessor a look of chagrin and said, “so, wanting to launch a laundry basket at my husband’s head…that’s bad, right?”

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Should religions be allowed to discrimate?

Marci A. Hamilton — Tue, 5 Apr 2011 16:27:20 EST

Congress and the state legislatures owe it to potential employees of religious institutions to warn them of their lack of protection from invidious discrimination.

The Supreme Court this week granted review on the issue of whether religious organizations have a constitutional right to discriminate against their employees. That is right—there is a legal argument that religious organizations should have a constitutional right to treat their employees in ways no secular organization could.

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