I first heard of conservative German bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst last year, when Der Spiegel revealed some salient facts about a trip the Catholic shepherd undertook. The Catholic bishop of Limburg, a small city in western Germany, apparently had noble motives when he boarded a plane to India with his vicar general in mid-January. “We were there to support social projects in and around Bangalore,” Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst reported after his return. They wanted to help children “who worked breaking stones,” he added. But this man of God didn’t just want to do something good for the poor. He also wanted to do something nice for himself. On the upper deck of a jumbo jet, he and Vicar General Franz Kaspar had made themselves comfortable in the plane’s first-class section, which offers such amenities as champagne, caviar and a bed. Price per ticket: almost $10,000. Read more
You know what we haven’t seen enough of lately? Oprah Winfrey’s show “Super Soul Sunday.” I heard it’s good. Last year, Winfrey interviewed the author of several bestselling spirituality books, Marianne Williamson. Let’s see how long you last watching this, starting at the 1:14 mark: It’s all a lot of nonsensical spirituality, where you say so much and so little all at once. Like this excerpt from one of her books: Read more
A press release for Pastor Mark Driscoll’s new book contains this laughable passage: … the outspoken pastor from Seattle issues a prophetic warning to the church that “dark days are ahead” if we don’t stop the in-fighting and refocus our efforts on preaching the gospel immediately. “We’re approaching a cliff,” writes Driscoll. “Many Evangelicals are oblivious to the fact that Christendom is dead and real Christianity is in serious decline. As long as we see Christmas trees on government property and hear public figures talk about ‘faith,’ many Christians naively assume that real Christianity is alive and well. That’s an illusion.” The bad news is that Christians don’t even get it, according to Driscoll — they’re stuck in their cul-de-sacs. Christians are isolated in “tribes” on the internet, and they spend too much time lobbing e-bombs at each other in cyberspace. Religion News Service’s Jonathan Merritt takes Driscoll to task for not practicing what he preaches. Read more
I’ve always been a huge fan of Girl Scout cookies because I am an all-American, red-blooded, gun-toting, God-fearing… wait… I got carried away somewhere in there. Anyway, Tagalongs are my jam and (true story) last year I had Thin Mints for the first time when a coworker flipped out because I had never had one. (My excuse was that I’m not a fan of mint… I was wrong. I love mint. The thinner, the better.) But I digress. A few years ago, I became aware that the Girl Scouts of America not only manufacture amazing snacks, but are also a pretty kick-ass organization — and more or less the anti-Boy Scouts. And the reasons that I think GSA is pretty awesome — they’re supportive of the LGBTQ community, they don’t enforce religious ideals, they promote smart sex education, they piss off right-wingers, etc. — are the very reasons that Pastor Kevin Swanson haaaaaaaaaaates them. So, in an effort to save us all from accidentally supporting babies getting abortions or whatever, Swanson went on a radio show to explain (read: rant like a crazy person) how people who buy Girl Scout cookies are supporting Planned Parenthood, abortion and (obviously) lesbianism: Read more
Last weekend, Pastor John MacArthur hosted a conference in conjunction with the release of his new book Strange Fire, in which he rails against the Charismatic movement in Christianity. He calls it a “breeding-ground for scandal, greed, bad doctrine, and all kinds of spiritual chicanery” (as opposed to the other kinds of Christianity, which we know are absolutely perfect in every single way). Things got really weird, though, when Pastor Mark Driscoll (a Charismatic preacher himself), who was speaking at another conference not too far away from this one, showed up out of nowhere to hand out free copies of his own book in the parking lot: Driscoll told [the Christian Post] that he thought it was “gracious that they let me on campus at all.” “They don’t owe me anything and I didn’t go through an official process. I wasn’t planning on it. I just happened to be in town,” he said. (Yeah, I just happened to be in town! And I just happened to bring along a whole bunch of my books! And I just happened to let everyone know what I was doing on Twitter well before I actually did it!) When Driscoll came, so did the conference security. They politely asked Driscoll to leave and take his books with him. After all, there’s a process for conferences when it comes to these things. If you want to sell or give away your wares, you have to get approval from the organizers, and Driscoll did none of that. “It wasn’t that we were trying to stir up trouble with Pastor Mark, we just removed them because we have a lot of different publishing partners that are here on campus already and all of their books all the way down the line, everything they are selling has already gone through a pre-approval process,” Pastor Rich Gregory, who is MacArthur’s assistant, told [the Christian Post]. “I don’t think anybody, Mark included, would probably allow their conference just to be opened to whatever private editors wanted to step onto campus and distribute anything that they wanted to. So, that’s a policy that would be consistent with any church or conference.” Now here’s where things get really good. Read more
Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park is the only public diamond-producing site in the world that is open to the public. Over 75,000 diamonds have been found at this site since its discovery in 1906 — and on Saturday, another diamond was found. 14-year-old Tana Clymer discovered a 3.85-carat diamond, making it the 396th found this year. The teen had this to say about her discovery, which could be worth tens of thousands of dollars: Read more
You may recall that the Upstate Atheists from Spartanburg, South Carolina attempted to volunteer at the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen this past spring: Unfortunately, their efforts were thwarted by the group’s director. She said the soup kitchen was a “place of God” and atheists weren’t welcome. The members still offered to volunteer without wearing their group-identifying shirts — it’s all about helping people, not about publicity, after all — but that idea was also rejected. The atheists then decided they would help people in a different way. They would get a permit from the city, create care packages for the homeless, and give them away across the street from the soup kitchen. Each care package costs about $15 to assemble. They have socks, gloves, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, snacks, mini flashlights, lip balm, ponchos, etc. We are hoping to help the homeless prepare for the winter and give them thing they will be able to use. They wanted to raise $2,000 and you all helped them surpass that goal. (Great job!) Their big giveaway is taking place this weekend, and the Spartanburg Herald Journal published a piece on the events that led to this Volunteering Schism. Reporter Dustin Wyatt spoke with the soup kitchen’s director, Lou Landrum, and what she said was absolutely appalling: Read more
Yesterday, I revealed that the first selection in my new book club would be Candace R. M. Gorham’s The Ebony Exodus Project: Why Some Black Women Are Walking out on Religion — and Others Should Too. Perhaps because of that mention, it did pretty decently on Amazon yesterday. In fact, last night, it was ranked in the top 10! Well, at least in one particular category… Read more
