RevCyn

I recently was in a discussion about Islam where a person said something like, "I had heard that the terrorists were just extremists, and the rest of Islam is peaceful, but then I got some e-mails that said that the goal of Islam is world domination, and that Muslims are allowed to lie about their faith if it serves the goal of spreading Islam, so how can you know what the truth is?" I was a bit stunned into silence.  And the conversation moved on rather quickly, and before I gathered my thoughts, the moment was lost.  I'm still planning to go back to this person and see if we can have a longer conversation on Islam, one-on-one, or bring a presentation on Islam to this group that was meeting, but in the meantime, I'm, well, blogging... I actually hadn't heard this particular myth that Islam was focused on world domination and that Muslims would lie to achieve this, so couldn't be trusted.  So I did a web search on "Islam world domination lie" and...

There's been a lot of talk about the individuals and groups that have been praying for Obama's death.  The groups and individuals are varied and take different forms.  For example: The Facebook page titled " DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN " has over a million fans.   Wiley Drake, a former Southern Baptist Convention official, has made public statements that he prays for Obama to die, saying that he's been praying an "imprecatory prayer" against Obama.    Imprecatory Prayer is a prayer, such as some of the Psalms, which asks God to damn, curse, or otherwise harm an individual.  T-shirts, bumper stickers, and more are available which say "Pray for Obama" and cite Psalm 109:8, which reads, "May his days be few; may another seize his positio...

The Religious Education Committee asked me last night to talk with the teen group on a Sunday I'm not preaching. The teen group has been studying Jesus this year, and their curriculum goes up through crucifixion and resurrection, but their question is: how did we get here (modern Christianity) from there (Easter morning)? It's an excellent question, and one that many people in our society have never bothered to consider. The (mis)understanding that, I think, many fundamentalist Christians hold is that the disciples immediately sat down and wrote out the story and bound it together. The words they wrote were either dictated by God or somehow inspired, endorsed, or edited by God. That Bible was handed down through the generations (with each translation being similarly divinely edited), and we have it in exactly that form today. Nothing, of course, could be further from what those who study the historical Jesus believe to be the truth. Of course, there are different schools o...

Rev. Sean over at his "ministrare" blog had a very beautiful post about Ash Wednesday. As we enter Lent, I have to confess something: Lent has always mystified me. I can remember as a child, that I had friends who observed Lent, and my response was always confusion then. I didn't know what it was, what it symbolized, what one did and why, what it meant. Even when children tried to explain it to me, I just reacted with a sort of deep confusion: why would anyone do that? I know the answers to those things now, but some of the mystery still surrounds it. If I was asked to do an Ash Wednesday service now, my response would be as much confusion as I experienced during my hospital chaplaincy during seminary when I was asked to give communion to a Catholic. I don't know the words, the order, the ritual. I think any Ash Wednesday service I did would be hollow and fake. For me, perhaps, it would be cultural borrowing to attempt such a thing. One could say I have the c...