Cathy Grossman has a profile of Franklin Graham in USA Today. It’s a really thorough and conversational piece that contrasts Franklin with his more famous father, Billy:
The difference between Jesus and God
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South Dakota reconsiderations
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Serving God -- and time
James Tramel, an Episcopal priest, delivers sermons to his Berkeley congregation four times a year. To do so, he places a collect call from the Solano State Prison. Tramel is a convicted murderer and is believed by church officials to be the only American inmate ordained as an Episcopal priest.
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Maybe SUVs really are linked to terrorism!
It will be interesting to see how media coverage of yesterday’s unfortunate event in North Carolina develops. Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, an Iranian-born man raised in Charlotte, drove an SUV into a crowd of students at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. No one was killed and a handful were injured. The local ABC affiliate explains:
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Will evangelicals rediscover crosses?
In Wednesday’s Lenten post, I noted that Slate‘s Andrew Santella wrote an interesting article about the revival of Lenten practices among Protestants. I chided him for throwing all Protestants together, from those that have marked Lenten penitence since the beginning with those evangelicals that are rediscovering the practices of the church.
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Penitence, fasting and pride
Today is Ash Wednesday, the traditional beginning of Lent for the Western Christian church. According to an ancient rite, ashes — made by mixing the burnt palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebrations with a bit of olive oil — are placed on the foreheads of worshipers as a reminder of their depraved nature and dependence on God for forgiveness. During Lent, purple paraments drape the altars of liturgical churches and Glorias and Alleluias are omitted from the liturgy. These changes are meant to focus the worshiper on the penitential nature of the season. For their part, some worshipers traditionally mark the season by fasting from meat and alcohol, as well as spending more time in prayer and reflection.
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Lack of perspective
We’ve been covering the Hindutva textbook controversy in California for a few months. The Los Angeles Times‘ Theresa Watanabe has a piece on the Hindu nationalists who are fighting to make the changes that’s worth a read.
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Everyone a beer minister
Sometimes I am in conversations with friends who talk about having certain types of ministries. Confessional Lutherans have only one type of ministry — Word and Sacrament — so the terminology always amuses me. When my friends tell me they have a young mothers ministry or youth ministry or music ministry, I always try to fit in by telling them I have a bar ministry.
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Tooning in
Just a quick note to follow-up on Old Man Mattingly’s post about different standards for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Catholic church leaders in New Zealand are calling for a boycott of television stations that plan to screen an “ugly and tasteless” episode of South Park, according to the BBC. I have seen many episodes of South Park and I can’t think of one that wasn’t ugly or tasteless. Sometimes they’re even funny.
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