» BACK TO BODY PARTS MAIN

Archive for the ‘church news’ Category

Closet Christians

Monday, December 28th, 2009

Old_old_doorWe’ve still awash in eggnog over at my house, with important guests a-plenty for Christmas and New Year’s. But in the midst of Christmas caroling and the opening of presents and whatnot, I came across a pretty interesting essay at Salon.com by Ada Calhoun — a Christian who kept her faith a secret from her intellectual friends right up until this very essay.

Why am I so paranoid? I’m not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out — as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.

If you check out the post (and I recommend you do), you might notice that her own readers have very little sympathy. Salon.com is one of the Web’s more secular outlets, and many atheistic readers think it’s preposterous to think of Christians — who make up 80 percent or more of the country — as some sort of persecuted minority.

I get their reasoning. But at the same time, I know that I am, sadly, increasingly cautious when I talk about matters of faith with some of my more secular acquaintances. I make no bones about who I am or what I believe, but I do think there is, in some circles, a stigma to coming across as “too religious.” Perhaps this is nothing new … but it is new for me. 

Are Christians persecuted? No, I don’t think so. Not really. But I certainly don’t feel particularly ascendent, either. We still are part of the national dialogue. But are we its loudest voice? It doesn’t feel like it.

O Holey Night

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Old, glorious church buildings around the country are falling on hard times as their congregations age and dwindle. Some are crumbling around the pews, and without enough congregants to help pay for the upkeep, there’s very little that can be done to save these old structures.

The Detroit Pilgrim Church was such a structure. Once the largest Presbyterian church in the Midwest, the building had begun to degenerate as its congregation shrunk, and the Presbyterians handed it over to Pilgrim Church I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministry in 1992. But they didn’t have money to fix the building, either — particularly the gaping hole in the roof. Says ABC News:

Despite the hole in the roof, the church filled a hole in the community. It was a home to those without homes — offering its gym to those in need of a place to sleep, its kitchen to those in need of a meal and its prayers to those in need of hope.

“If you had come here the same day that I had come here and seen this whole sanctuary empty because nobody could sit in it… over to the left was a plastic tent and people huddled with their coats on, trying to pray and stay warm,” said local columnist and author of “Have a Little Faith” Mitch Albom.

The church made a big impression on Albom, and he founded the Hole in the Roof Foundation. Donations poured in from both the community and around the world (some from as far away as New Zealand), and in two weeks’ time the roof was patched. Now, this Christmas, Detroit Pilgrim will meet in a warm, dry sanctuary for the first time in years.

“We want the people to learn brotherhood and love and the importance of caring for one another,” Pilgrim pastor Henry Covington told ABC. “Because [it's] the only way we’re going to survive. We didn’t do this by ourselves.” 

It’s a good lesson to learn at any time of year, I think, but maybe particularly during the Christmas season. We often hear that it’s better to give than to receive. But, in the case of Pilgrim, it’s a blessing to receive — and receive with gratefulness — too.

Oral Roberts: The Legacy

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

 

"Praying Hands" at Oral Roberts University. Photo courtesy the ORU Web site

"Praying Hands" at Oral Roberts University. Photo courtesy the ORU Web site

Oral Roberts, one of America’s most influential charismatic pastors and perhaps the country’s first real televangelist, died yesterday from complications of pneumonia. He was 91.

 

Over the next few days, I’m sure eulogists will offer tributes to Roberts for all the great good he’s done, and I’m sure they’re all well deserved. For me, my first memory of the man — when he told his followers that God would call him home unless donors ponied up $8 million to shore up his school — forever mars his image in my mind. And I’m genuinely sorry about that. I wish I could appreciate him more, for there is much to appreciate. He influenced modern Christianity greatly — both for better and for worse.

Patton Dodd, my good friend (and former editor of this Web site), never met Oral Roberts, as far as I know. But he went to the school he founded for a time, documenting the experience with beautiful, brutal honesty in his book “My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion.”  And, when I heard of Roberts’ passing, I recalled a passage where Dodd describes his first impression of Oral Robert University’s Tulsa, Okla., campus:

Pulling in, we see the welcoming structure: a forty-foot bronze statue of two hands clasped in prayer. “There’s the Praying Hands,” someone says, alerting me to the statue’s apt name. The hands are pointed upward so that their wrists form the base and their rounded fingertips form the summit. Everyone in the van becomes quiet at the sight of this megalith, and I wonder whether we are all thinking, Wow, what a moving symbol of our faith, or Wow, what a misguided caricature. I am stuck in between. I am committed to prayer — I am, in fact, a Prayer Warrior — but this. This is eccentric. Finally, someone emits a snicker, and we all relieve ourselves with giggles. It’s not blasphemous to laugh at the laughable. Really, it’s a good-natured giggle at our own expense, because it is faith like ours that results in statues like this.

Perhaps those praying hands are a fitting symbol of Oral Roberts himself, and what he stood for: Maybe we’re awed by what he did, what he accomplished, what he meant to so many Christians. Maybe we laugh a little. Regardless, the hands remain, clasped in prayer — reverent, ironic, forever challenging — a monument to a towering faith, and how it can lose something in the translation.

‘I’m Sort of a Buddhist, New Age Type of Christian’

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

USA Today published a fascinating story by Cathy Lynn Grossman yesterday. The subject: How Christians are augmenting their faith with elements — sometimes pretty big ones — from other religions. The top starts off like this:

Going to church this Sunday? Look around.

The chances are that one in five of the people there find “spiritual energy” in mountains or trees, and one in six believe in the “evil eye,” that certain people can cast curses with a look — beliefs your Christian pastor doesn’t preach.

In a Catholic church? Chances are that one in five members believe in reincarnation in a way never taught in catechism class —that you’ll be reborn in this world again and again.

As I said, fascinating — and a little shocking. Grossman says that 65 percent of U.S. adults — a good chunk of whom claim to be Christian — have incorporated Eastern religious thought or New Age doctrine into their lives. Hard to believe that folks could deviate so much from what their religion teaches, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

While this mix-and-matching of religion would seem, at first blush, to be very postmodern, mixing and matching one’s faith with other spiritual elements probably isn’t all that new. I know Christians who are deeply committed to their faith, but nevertheless read their horoscopes daily or believe in ghosts. And many of them are in their 60s or 70s — not exactly poster children for postmodernism.

I recently watched “The Princess and the Frog,” a charming little Disney film that just happens to incorporate Voodoo — a mishmash of Catholicism and animistic religions brought from Africa to the New World on slave ships. And, while we might tsk-tsk Voodoo, how many of us at one time have engaged in another vaguely spiritual and certainly not Christian rite popularized by Disney — wishing upon a star?

We humans are amazingly inconsistent (and easily bored) creatures, and we tend to tinker with everything we touch, whether it’s a computer desktop, a car engine or a 2,000-year-old religion. Cherry-picking from other faiths is something that has always been rather tempting for us. And, while I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with, say, going to a yoga class, it’s still critical, I think, to stay grounded in the Word of God. It’s the only way I know of to know what our faith allows — and what it doesn’t.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Monday, November 16th, 2009

10 dollarsThe economy’s been hard on everyone. But what to do about it? Stick what’s left of our money in our mattresses? Buy Dodges and Chevys in the hopes that GM and Chrysler will be able to pay back their government loans? Ask the fed for an individualized bailout plan?

Robinwood Church in Surf City, Calif., had a different thought. The church — with a little help from an anonymous donor — decided to give $10 to the first 100 people through its doors yesterday, along with orders to spend it.

Now, $10 isn’t enough to send  anyone to college or pay their mortgage. But it is enough to help stimulate the local economy a bit, and that’s exactly what the money was intended to do, according to The Orange County Register. And, while some folks who walked through Robinwood’s doors tried to turn the gift down, Robinwood was having none of it. 

“We made them take it,” said Executive Business Pastor Robert Black.

Most of the congregants spent the money in local eateries after the service. And, with Robinwood contemplating turning the giveaway into a monthly event, you can bet restaurant owners around Surf City are feeling a bit more blessed these days.

The Gospel of Optimism

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Joel Osteen

Joel Osteen

Joel Osteen, wildly popular and somewhat controversial purveyor of the so-called Prosperity Gospel, granted an interview with Time magazine recently. The magazine assumed that perhaps some of the sheen of Osteen’s message might’ve lost some of its glint, what with the recession clinging tenaciously to most folks’ pocketbooks.

Not so. Attendance at his Lakewood Church in Houston is up 10 percent, and this spring he preached in a sold-out Yankee Stadium. His message sounds as relentlessly optimistic as ever.

These days there are so many things trying to pull us down, with the economy and the swine flu. I really think there’s something [that affects people] on the inside when somebody tells them, like I do, God’s still in control. He’s got good things in store for your life. And when you trust, when you believe, you can see amazing things happen.

I’ve always thought the Prosperity Gospel, as I understand it, was kinda bunk, and suspected that those who pedaled it were too pollyannaish for my taste. A quick trip through the New Testament will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that getting right with God doesn’t guarantee a life on easy street.

But, being the optimist I am, what Osteen says in this piece resonates with me. I believe its the height of folly to assume God will monetarily reward us if we’re good Christians. But I do believe that God cares for us and (all things being equal) likes for us to be happy. And I do believe he does have great plans for us — though the greatness is in the plan, not us. 

But I gotta be honest with you — I’m not overly familiar with the Prosperity Gospel or what Osteen (or others) teach. Are any of you know a little more about this topic than I do? Fill me in, if you would. I’d love to hear from you.