October 24, 2022

We are visiting congregationalism this week (by way of the United Church of Christ)! This post has been a tough one to finish. I began it the day after my latest ecumenical visit, several weeks ago, but I was unable to get it done because I was trying not to write something overly negative that sounded essentially like a bad Yelp review. Since, I never could produce a summary that I was happy with, here’s the one I have since... Read more

September 9, 2022

Perhaps one of the most significant single quotations of the 19th century was by the prodigious and often misconstrued German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said – among other things – “God is dead.” That little sentence has caused immeasurable trouble ever since it was published in 1882 in Nietzsche’s The Gay Philosophy and was reiterated in the seminal Thus Spake Tharathustra. The poor little sentence has been reduced time and time again to a mere statement if atheism. That reading... Read more

August 20, 2022

Our next ecumenical visit is one which I debated writing about for a couple of reasons. First of all, my main goal in undertaking this project was to step into new or less familiar spaces and traditions. Second, I wanted to do this with as little bias as possible. The church I visited this past Wednesday evening, however, was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, just like the church I was baptized in and attended from childhood until college.... Read more

August 2, 2022

I am undertaking a long-term project of visiting as many different varieties of churches as I can and writing about the experiences in order to better understand various points of view and lived experiences within the broadly Christian milieu, as well as to seek out what Catholicism calls the “seeds of truth” tucked away within the soil of every tradition.  (Note to my Catholic readers: This project does not include skipping out on Sunday mass or taking communion outside the... Read more

July 18, 2022

  A blip in the previous month’s news had a particular theological significance. (Reported here by NPR).  Apparently, when US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports the legality of abortion in the United States, visited the Vatican, she and her husband attended a mass presided over by Pope Francis, and she received communion, albeit not from the Pope’s own hand, but from a priest under this authority.  This is significant because Pelosi’s own bishop back home,... Read more

July 18, 2022

“The church,” one old saying alleges, “thinks in centuries.” This is the mantra that attempts to explain the rate of change within Catholicism. To many modern people, it seems the only centuries the Roman Catholic Church is capable of thinking in are previous ones. To students of the reformation, the church is as “medieval” as the day Luther posted his 95 theses on the door in Wittenberg. To progressive Catholics, the church is chasing the grandeur of the Renaissance and... Read more


Browse Our Archives

Close Ad