Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Washington Post]   The Home Run Derby, a made-for-TV contest that precedes Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, is usually a frivolous folly. Players blast home runs, the fans ooh and ahh, and everyone has a good time. But Monday night’s event unexpectedly turned into a showcase of religious beliefs. Christians applauded Josh Hamilton’s first-round feats, while atheists took it on the chin from an ESPN broadcaster. Hamilton, the 27-year-old Texas Rangers outfielder, has seen his life come full circle. In 1999, he was the No. ... Read More

[Newsweek] Obama says his spiritual quest was driven by two main impulses. He was looking for a community that he could call home—a sense of rootedness and belonging he missed from his biracial, peripatetic childhood. The visits to the black churches uptown helped fulfill that desire. "There's a side very particular to the African-American church tradition that was powerful to me," he says. The exuberant worship, the family atmosphere and the prophetic preaching at a church such as Abyssinian would have appealed to ... Read More

[Telegraph] John Lennon famously claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, even predicting that Christianity would "vanish and shrink". But 28 years after his death, in an interview being broadcast for the first time, he claims that on the contrary, he hoped to encourage people to focus on the Christian faith. Despite his familiar image as a hippy icon who invited us to imagine a world without religion, Lennon says he was "one of Christ's biggest fans" and felt emotional in church. In the interview, ... Read More

President Bush said Saturday that religious charities, partly financed with federal money, have helped reduce homelessness, found jobs for former inmates and helped combat malaria and HIV/AIDS overseas.  Your can read more about that here.  I think it is great to hear that faith based ministries are making a difference in parts of the country. That should be a given.   Last week Cassandra and I were in Uptown Charlotte celebrating our 20th Anniversary.  I was going to get our van after dinner ... Read More

[Telegraph] More than half of Britons think Christianity is likely to have disappeared from the country within a century, according to a survey. Research by the Orthodox Jewish organisation Aish found that just over a third of people thought religions like Christianity and Judaism would still be practiced in Britain in 100 years' time. Although four in 10 people said they would choose to be a member of the Christian religion, almost the same number said they would rather practice no religion at all. Buddhism however, ... Read More