4 days ago · O ne of the most dangerous aspects of religion is the willingness of some of its adherents to imagine that they can grasp the fullness of God and understand how, where, when and why God acts in human affairs.. Ever since Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt while campaigning last year in Pennsylvania, lots of people have declared that he survived only because God intervened so that ...

Jan 1, 2025 · A few weeks ago here on the blog, I wrote about the difference between "private religion" and more communal approaches to being part of a faith tradition.. I invited readers to respond with their experiences of one kind of faith or the other. Today, to start out a brand new year, I want to share a couple of responses to that post because I thought they were insightful for me and might be for ...

Feb 5, 2025 · I f, like many Americans today, you are feeling distress and angst about the moral quality of our elected leadership, perhaps you need a model from the recent past to remind you that the United States has had some moral and ethical giants in office.. The late John Lewis, a former congressman from Georgia and a civil rights leader whose nonviolent approach nearly cost him his life several times ...

Aug 31, 2024 · O nce upon a time, when I knew a lot more than I know today, I thought, sort of, that the world would be a lot more peaceful if everyone became, say, a Presbyterian like me. Or a Methodist. Or a Muslim. Or a Jew. Or, or, or. . . My immaturity and foolishness were little short of monumental. My thinking at the time, as I recall, was that such unanimity would end a lot of fighting that is rooted ...

Dec 18, 2024 · As we move to the end of a remarkable year that has been challenging in countless of ways, I've been thinking about the big picture.You know, an eternal view. A cosmic sense of things. It's been one way to reconvince myself that I cannot, individually, change everything I want to change in the world -- from ending wars to stopping crime to …

B ill Tammeus is the former Faith section columnist for The Kansas City Star.He came to The Star in 1970 as a reporter, spent nearly 27 years on the paper’s editorial page, mostly writing the daily "Starbeams" column, and then moved his column in March 2004 to the weekly Faith section. He took formal retirement in mid-2006 but continued as …

Jan 15, 2025 · W hen I served on a committee that helped to oversee the theological education of Presbyterian seminary students in my area, we would require those students to write a new "statement of faith" each year. (I'm not sure if that still is required, but I hope so.) The idea was that the students' understanding of Christianity and its foundational beliefs should grow or mature in some way each year ...

Nov 30, 2024 · O ne of the intriguing results of the recent presidential election was the voter turnout, which was down more than 8.5 million votes compared with turnout in 2020.. As I write this, the turnout this year as counted so far was just under 147 million compared with the 2020 turnout of about 155.5 million.. What happened? Lots of theories, some of which make sense.

Nov 20, 2024 · O ne of the intriguing results of the recent presidential election was the voter turnout, which was down more than 8.5 million votes compared with turnout in 2020.. As I write this, the turnout this year as counted so far was just under 147 million compared with the 2020 turnout of about 155.5 million.. What happened? Lots of theories, some of which make sense.

Dec 28, 2024 · P atriotism, meaning a commitment to one's country, is quite different from a commitment to one's faith tradition. But they share at least this in common: Both require an unswerving willingness to speak the truth, to question and challenge policies and actions that seem destructive and to know not only what you stand for …