Associate Professor
Graduate School of Religion
Fordham University
August 16, 2011
In pastoral research, we are firmly in the age of the rage for literacy.
The consensus is striking, the baton relayed from one domain of
ecclesial expertise to another: from pastoral workers, to seminary and
graduate theological school faculty, to some of the most influential
sociologists of religion and practical theologians, and finally to young
adults and teenagers themselves, the urge to describe and denounce
religious illiteracy has become both diatribe and truism in almost any
discussion of the practice of faith today in Christian circles.
A whole vocabulary of spiritual insouciance is marshaled to frame common
practice and to symbolize the tendency of the larger secularizing
American society: teenagers and young adults are said to be
“uncatechized,” “poorly discipled,” they constitute a “domestic mission
field,” they suffer from any number of deformations of
faith-imagination.
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May 11, 2011
The problem of distraction in the spiritual life has always been a
challenge. The gospel account of Jesus in the home of Martha and Mary
has often been a reminder to Christians of the call to let go of the
worry and distraction we see exemplified in Martha and to choose the
“better part” of attention on God that we find in her younger sister
Mary. In the early desert tradition of Christian spirituality, the
ancient monastics spoke of the need for Sabbath, solitude, silence,
stillness and unceasing prayer in an effort to create enough space
amidst inner distraction and dissipation to hear God’s call to
relationship. Lest we think this was an impossibly remote ideal for
young persons, the later medieval ideal of the school and university was
based on the experience of “schola” (Latin for “leisure”) in order for
deeper order reflection and contemplation to take place.
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May 09, 2011
One day, I stepped off the plane in Minneapolis airport to catch another
flight and found myself sitting in a departure lounge waiting for the
next boarding call. A gentleman near me suddenly started talking to
someone I couldn’t see. He was holding a conversation with no one. I
looked but he wasn’t even holding one of those new, nifty palm-sized
mobile phones. Who was he talking to then? I looked around embarrassed
and thought that the poor man must be delirious after a red-eye flight
from San Francisco and just needed to lie down somewhere and collect
himself. The conversation continued. I began to stare and finally
noticed a strange blue light flashing on what appeared to be a hearing
aid in his ear but the device had a long cord I’d never seen before. I
had just been introduced to Bluetooth technology.
At that moment, I began to feel a strange shock and dread coming over
me. There was something weird going on...
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Former Chaplain for Episcopal Canterbury Fellowship
Northern Arizona University
April 19, 2011
The folks at FTE have asked me if I’ll write a follow-up to my 20 Steps to a Renewed Church
(posted on April 8th). At first, I didn’t think I had anything more to
say than I’d already said. Plus, the mere mention of Church Issues
makes me want to fill my backpack with trail mix and furs and head into
the Alaskan wilderness indefinitely. But then… what I got to ponder was
how easy it is to spout off a Manifesto For How To Live, and how hard it
is to actually live. So, here’s my follow-up to the original post.
There are good reasons, culturally, why church does not work for many
people, especially many young people. By and large church is a place
where human beings come to interact together in person and
inter-generationally, discuss an ancient text, and participate in a
bunch of archaic rituals. In short, it is a counter-cultural situation
in the extreme. A very common response to the counter-cultural
character of church is to try to make the church “relevant,” which is
often a synonym for non-counter-cultural, hip, trendy, and full of Power
Point.
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Former Chaplain for Episcopal Canterbury Fellowship
Northern Arizona University
April 08, 2011
Tonight I went to a meeting at the local Episcopal church; it was a
dinner and get-together with the new Bishop of Alaska. Apparently,
Alaska hasn't had an Episcopal bishop for a while, so this is exciting
news that there is now a bishop. The dear little Episcopal church
here, which is called St. James the Fisherman (how cool is that
name?!), is tiny and doesn't have a priest and is run by
well-intentioned older women. Which is the story of so many rural
Episcopal churches
I left thinking, "ah, the church." Not "ah" like a sigh of relief,
but more just a sigh. I feel like buried in the center of the church
(and I mean the church as a whole--all the Christians worldwide) is
this amazing, redemptive, beautiful thing.
When I was an Episcopal chaplain--for four years--all the time people
in the church would ask me, "Why don't young people come to church?"
or "How do we get young people to come to church?" I have some
suggestions now, so listen up.
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Scholar-in-Residence
March 22, 2011
A University of Massachusetts Medical School study recently found
that storytelling may have positive effects on patients with high blood
pressure. For at least one group of low-income African Americans
followed in the study, listening to personal narratives helped maintain
lower blood pressure as effectively as more medication. The study found
that participants who watched videos of stories drawn from their own
community and told in patients' natural voices fared better than those
who watched generic, how-to videos about stress reduction.
Does that surprise us? All the world's religious traditions hold...
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National Director of DOOR (Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection)
December 03, 2010
During my senior year of college I was required to write 5 and 10 year goals for my life. It was assumed that developing a vision for life after college was a good thing. A plan would help me to map out the next few years. Graduation would not be a step into the unknown butrather a step into the known.
Lately I have started to question the value of planning and knowing. How much control do we actually have over the future?
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