Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Time]

One Sunday last fall, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, was preaching on the logic and power of Jesus’ words “Love thine enemy.” As is his custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels’ preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow.

Yet neither Hybels’ sermon, nor his 23,400-person congregation, is as white as he is. Along with Jesus, he invoked Martin Luther King Jr. Then he introduced Shawn Christopher, a former backup singer for Chaka Khan, who offered a powerhouse rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” As the music swelled, Larry and Renetta Butler, an African-American couple in their usual section in the 7,800-seat sanctuary, exchanged glances. Since Hybels decided 10 years ago to aggressively welcome minorities to his lily-white congregation, Renetta says, few sermons pass without a cue that he is still at it. “He always throws in something,” she says. She’s been around long enough to recall when this wasn’t the case.

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared that “11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week … And the Sunday school is still the most segregated school.” That largely remains true today. Despite the growing desegregation of most key American institutions, churches are still a glaring exception. Surveys from 2007 show that fewer than 8% of American congregations have a significant racial mix.

Since Reconstruction, when African Americans fled or were ejected from white churches, black and white Christianity have developed striking differences of style and substance. The argument can be made that people attend the church they are used to; many minorities have scant desire to attend a white church, seeing their faith as an important vessel of cultural identity. But those many who desire a transracial faith life have found themselves discouraged — subtly, often unintentionally, but remarkably consistently. In an age of mixed-race malls, mixed-race pop-music charts and, yes, a mixed-race President, the church divide seems increasingly peculiar. It is troubling, even scandalous, that our most intimate public gatherings — and those most safely beyond the law’s reach — remain color-coded.

But in some churches, the racial divide is beginning to erode, and it is fading fastest in one of American religion’s most conservative precincts: Evangelical Christianity. According to Michael Emerson, a specialist on race and faith at Rice University, the proportion of American churches with 20% or more minority participation has languished at about 7.5% for the past nine years. But among Evangelical churches with attendance of 1,000 people or more, the slice has more than quadrupled, from 6% in 1998 to 25% in 2007.

Read more here.

[From me]

Lets hope this trend continues. I saw the beginning of the end when I started inviting people of color to a church I was serving at. The thing is my children don’t see color. My daughter’s best friend before we moved here was a different shade than she is. And many of my son’s best friends don’t look like him either. If we truly believe in John 3:16 then we must reach everyone!

What do you think?

[HT] Vicki Frye

[NPR]

A billboard at a New Zealand church depicting a downcast Joseph lying beside Mary in bed and the heading “God is a hard act to follow” provoked more than the intended reconsideration of the meaning of Christmas.

The sign was defaced by a paint-wielding vandal just hours after it was erected Thursday outside the St. Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in Auckland, and triggered passionate and sometimes angry debate on talk radio and the Internet.

Church vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was intended to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story.

“This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary,” said Cardy, who described his church as having very liberal ideas about Christianity.

“We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense,” he said.

Read more here.

[From me]

Do you think this sign will really bring people into hear the message? I just think it was a cheap attempt to be funny.

What do you think?

[Parade Magazine]

America is generally thought to be among the most religious nations in the Western world. We Americans are often portrayed as people who believe in God, pray often, and teach our children to do the same. All true, confirms PARADE’s new national poll on spirituality.

But our faith is also far more complex than these stereotypes. PARADE’s survey reveals a nation looking heavenward—but with its feet firmly planted on the ground of modern life. Spiritually speaking, Americans are a very practical people, moderate and tolerant in ways that would have astonished our grandparents.

Our nation was built on a foundation of strong faith, and in some respects, that hasn’t changed. In fact, 69% of Americans believe in God, 77% pray outside of religious services, and 75% believe it’s a parent’s responsibility to give children a religious upbringing. But even though 45% of respondents called themselves religious, 50% said they rarely or never attend worship services.

More than a quarter (27%) of respondents said they don’t practice any kind of religion. As books with titles like God Is Not Great and The God Delusion have climbed the best-seller lists in recent years, sociologists have speculated about a new atheism in the U.S. No such thing, according to PARADE’s survey—only 5% of respondents didn’t believe in God, 7% weren’t sure about the existence of God, and 12% didn’t believe in an afterlife.

Do you believe in God? Take the poll…

Read more here.

[From me]

I think we are definitely more spiritual but what “Spirit” is it? It isn’t a matter of believing in God…it is which God or Gods? In some ways it makes it easier to talk to people because they are often open to spiritual matters. On the other hand they all of these religions blur the truth. Part of the problem with the poll is what is their definition of spiritual vs. religious. I don’t consider myself religious. Religious means a bunch of rules. I do consider myself spiritual because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

What do you think?

[AP]

Organized religion was already in trouble before the fall of 2008. Denominations were stagnating or shrinking, and congregations across faith groups were fretting about their finances. The Great Recession made things worse. It’s further drained the financial resources of many congregations, seminaries and religious day schools. Some congregations have disappeared and schools have been closed. In areas hit hardest by the recession, worshippers have moved away to find jobs, leaving those who remain to minister to communities struggling with rising home foreclosures, unemployment and uncertainty.

Religion has a long history of drawing hope out of suffering, but there’s little good news emerging from the recession. Long after the economy improves, the changes made today will have a profound effect on how people practice their faith, where they turn for help in times of stress and how they pass their beliefs to their children.

Read more here.

[From me]

Maybe it is time for religion to downturn and a Relationship with the Living God to increase. Maybe God has allowed for this to happen to bring us back to the kind of worship He wanted all along.

What do you think?

[Guardian]

Tesco has been accused of religious discrimination after the company ordered the founder of a Jedi religion to remove his hood or leave a branch of the supermarket in north Wales.

Daniel Jones, founder of the religion inspired by the Star Wars films, says he was humiliated and victimised for his beliefs following the incident at a Tesco store in Bangor.

The 23-year-old, who founded the International Church of Jediism, which has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules.

But the grocery empire struck back, claiming that the three best known Jedi Knights in the Star Wars movies – Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker – all appeared in public without their hoods. Jones, from Holyhead, who is known by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said his religion dictated that he should wear the hood in public places and is considering legal action against the chain.

“It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head,” he said.

“You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public.”

Read more here.

[From me]

Couldn’t he use “THE FORCE” to make the store let him wear his hood?

What do you think?