Tag Archives: Christianity

Bunkum

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I’ve often heard from atheists that the Bible doesn’t stand up to academic scrutiny.
If they don’t trust the Bible, I imagine they wouldn’t waste their time discrediting
the Book of Mormon. DNA evidence casts doubt (duh!) Mormon claims that
Israelites emigrated to the Americas 2,600 years ago, with the now-extinct Lamanites
and Nephites becoming the ancestors of American Indians. (Thanks, Relapsed
Catholic)

This article made me think. What sorts of scientific research would cast doubt on
orthodox Christian beliefs? How would we respond? I invite my readers to come up
with answers to both hypothetical questions.

The Efficacy of Prayer

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Prayer is a weird thing. If you try to turn prayer into a way of asking God to do things, before long you’ll find yourself in a morass of conflicting theological precepts (e.g., God does whatever God wants versus God answers prayer). So a lot of Christians I have spoken with define prayer as little more than "communication with God." Apparently just initiating the link at all is enough to make prayer worthwhile. But doesn’t God know all my thoughts already? Oh, but God likes when you share voluntarily. Okay, sure, whatever.

Theomorph has posted some interesting ruminations about prayer. Anybody care to respond?

One Foundation

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I found a verse to Samuel Wesley’s “The Church’s One Foundation” that
I’d never heard before. It was in my grandmother’s old Lutheran hymnal (Before the
green book, before the red book, there was the black book.). I like it a lot.

Though, with a scornful wonder,
Men see her sore oppressed
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed;
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

Welcome to the Scrum

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“It is the mark of our whole modern history that the masses are kept quiet
with a fight. They are kept quiet by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus
most of us know by this time that the Party System has been popular only in the
sense that a football match is popular.” – G.K. Chesterton

This article pretty well sums up my voting dilemma. A snippet:

“If you are a liberal, you will vote for Senator Kerry. But if you’re anti-abortion rights, pro-family and pro-poor, like me, neither party speaks to my conscience as a Catholic. I want to vote for a presidential candidate who is a person of integrity, compassion and reflects the values of our great nation and my Catholic faith.” – Raymond L. Flynn

Some days I’m so fed up with the current political environment that I want to write in Trogdor. Other days I wonder who’s worse for democracy, the 50% of eligible voters who sit on their butts on election day, or the 64% of dementia patients in PA who don’t.

Christian Bigotry

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A friend of mine and semi-frequent comment poster has asked me numerous times to
stop posting “anti-gay stuff”. This Sed
Contra post might interest him. The blogger at SC is David Morrison, author
of Beyond Gay. He lives with same-sex attraction, but does not accept or
advocate the gay lifestyle. His most recent post, about the proper Christian response
to homosexuals, relates to Sunday’s Gospel
reading.

I care about this so much because I wouldn’t be Christ’s today if it were not for
the friendship and love of the Christians in my first Anglican parish, people who
knew I was a gay activist, didn’t agree with me about gay sex, and loved me anyway.
They knew I had homosexual sex and that I believed it was fine – and they disagreed
with me. But they nevertheless invited me to their cookouts, car washes, sporting
events, school plays, pot lucks – the whole joyful, chaotic mess of parish and family
life and as our friendships deepened they showed me they loved me.

And they told me their stories too. They told me about their own past drug use,
their own previous abortions, their own prior womanizing, and their own previous
struggles with the Faith and its demands. In short, they made it clear to me that
the church universal is a hospital for sinners far more than it is a penthouse for
saints.