worship

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Christmas in the mountains of North Carolina: Leaning into faith after the flood

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Christmas in the mountains of North Carolina: Leaning into faith after the flood

Christmas is a good news, bad news situation in Pensacola, a tiny community in the Cane River Valley high in the mountains of North Carolina.

The good news is that Hurricane Helene flooding -- which washed away almost everything at the town's crossroads -- was followed by waves of volunteers and relief shipments from churches, nonprofits and businesses large and small. Most of the Laurel Branch Baptist Church survived, in part because a bus-sized RV was swept into the front of the sanctuary, which diverted some of the raging floodwaters.

The bad news? While conditions are improving, many face Christmas in badly damaged houses, loaned mobile homes or worse. It's hard to put a Christmas tree inside a tent. And what happens if early snows and winds cripple the patched-up power lines?

"We've got people giving us Christmas on top of Christmas on top of Christmas. That's not the issue. We appreciate the generosity, but we have problems that are bigger than presents under a tree," said the Rev. Bradley Boone, pastor of Concord Baptist Church in nearby Burnsville. That's the county seat of rugged Yancey County, the location of Mount Mitchell -- the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River.

Pensacola is just one of many battered small towns along the matrix of rivers and creeks cut into the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Recent AccuWeather estimates for Helene damages have approached $250 billion. North Carolina lost at least 100 state bridges and more than 5,000 privately owned bridges.

The Boone roots run deep in the Cane River Valley, since he's in the seventh generation of a family tree topped by the legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone and his brothers. Pastor Boone is a veteran leader in the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department, which was the hub for rescue work during and after Helene, as well as the ongoing relief efforts.

Boone's own home was damaged by one of the 2,000 landslides in the North Carolina mountains. The road to his house looked like it had been bombed.

Pensacola is part of my own story, since I have three decades of ties there with family, friends and neighbors.

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An assassin's bullet changed Ronald Reagan's life, but what about Donald Trump?

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An assassin's bullet changed Ronald Reagan's life, but what about Donald Trump?

Not only did Pope Leo XIII collapse to the floor after celebrating Mass, but doctors couldn't find a pulse.

A priest who witnessed this 1886 drama testified: "His expression was one of horror and awe; the color and look on his face changing rapidly." When the pope regained consciousness, he described a hellish vision of Satan's plans to conquer the church.

In response, Pope Leo XIII wrote this prayer: "Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

For decades, Catholics recited this prayer after Mass, a practice continued by some Catholics and opposed by others. Thus, former President Donald Trump triggered debates by posting this prayer on social-media platforms on Sunday, September 29, the Catholic feast day of the archangels.

"Unless you're totally cynical and you think Trump was trying to appeal to the Catholic crowd before an election, you'd have to assume this had something to do with him coming millimeters from being killed by that bullet," said historian Paul Kengor of Grove City College, about 25 miles from Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the July 13 assassination attempt.

"It's logical to ask how coming that close to death affects a man," stressed Kengor, whose book "God and Ronald Reagan" discussed the impact of Reagan's near death after a 1981 shooting. "Donald Trump has been a major figure in American life for years, and the public knows a lot about him. Will we see changes in his personality and his behavior, maybe even his faith?"

Trump has clearly, and repeatedly, said that he believes God spared his life.

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Why are most clergy timid about smartphone wars? They fear offending parents

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Why are most clergy timid about smartphone wars? They fear offending parents

As the star of the scathing documentary "Religulous" -- "religious" plus "ridiculous" -- Bill Maher has never hidden his agnostic views about faith.

But that doesn't mean the stand-up comic doubts the reality of evil. Consider this blistering comment on smartphones, drawn from his "Real Time" talk show earlier this year.

Far too many people think "they don't need reality," Maher told social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of New York University, author of "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

"We've made reality obsolete -- interesting choice," said Maher. "Parents today, it's kind of the worst of both worlds. Too much hovering in real life, where there is any left, and then none with virtual. You go in your room, lock yourself in there with the portal of evil, that is the phone. … I feel like parents, in each generation, ceded more control to children."

In response, Haidt -- a self-avowed Jewish atheist -- stressed that modern life continues to eat away at the traditions of the past.

"As life gets easier, as people get wealthier, as they move away from the old days, authority tends to decay -- there tends to be less respect for authority, less respect for the old ways," said Haidt. "Kids need structure, they need moral rules. … When it seems as though anything is permissible, it doesn't make people happy. It makes them feel disoriented and lost."

Maher has made it clear that he is "not a tech enthusiast," noted Emily Harrison, in her "Dear Christian Parent" Substack newsletter. But the shocker in that HBO exchange was his claim that smartphones serve as a "portal of evil" in daily life.

"Wait. What? … Yes, smartphones can do lots of great things, but they also have made the proliferation of pornography mind boggling large," wrote Harrison. After all, five years ago, PornHub was already reporting 115,000,000 visits "per day with smartphones accounting for almost 84% of their online traffic. So, is the smartphone a 'portal of evil'? Yeah, I'd say so."

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

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What will happen if millions of religious believers sit out the 2024 election?

It was the rare Trump quote that caused groans as it rocketed through conservative media.

But this soundbite came from an upcoming memoir from former First Lady Melania Trump: "Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman's fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes. … I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”

Former President Donald Trump had already softened his party's strong stance against abortion, leading satirists at The Babylon Bee to note: "Pro-Lifers Excited To Choose Between Moderate Amount Of Baby Murder And High Amount of Baby Murder."

To put that in ballot-box terms, a new study by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University claimed that 32 million church-going Christians are poised to sit out this election, many because they are disillusioned or believe the results will be rigged.

If the number of conservative believers going to polls plummets, that would clash with trends in the last four White House races, according to political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, author of "20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America."

"Half of the Christians are not going to vote. That's normal. That's old news. … We can expect those numbers to remain stable," said Burge, reached by telephone.

But there's another trend researchers expect to see again, he added. Yes, 80% of white evangelicals "voted for John McCain in 2008 and 80% have been voting for Donald Trump. We can expect that to happen again. It's what they do."

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Sign of the times: It's painful -- but churches divided by doctrine almost always split

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Sign of the times: It's painful -- but churches divided by doctrine almost always split

After decades of progressive dissent, the leaders of the Christian Reformed Church in America finally took a firm stand against the Sexual Revolution.

Not only did the 2022 CRC Synod, voting 123-53, condemn "adultery, premarital sex, extra-marital sex, polyamory, pornography and homosexual sex," it added the small, but influential, denomination's longstanding teachings on these moral issues to its "declaration of faith."

The report added: "The church must warn its members that those who refuse to repent of these sins -- as well as of idolatry, greed, and other such sins -- will not inherit the kingdom of God." Dissenters should "repent of such sins for the sake of their souls."

Dissent continued, especially in congregations with strategic ties to Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the 2024 CRC Synod, it was clear the denomination would lose several dozen congregations, out of 1,000 in North America.

The Grand Rapids Eastern Avenue congregation proclaimed: "While all members of the church must always be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, it would be disingenuous for us as a church to deny, minimize, or hide a fundamental and intractable disagreement between a significant number of members of good standing in our church and the CRC's decision to make a particular interpretation a confessional matter." Thus, the "only way we can remain a Christian Reformed congregation with integrity … is under protest."

Head-on collisions are inevitable when believers in a religious institution proclaim -- in word and deed -- clashing stands on ancient doctrines, said the Rev. Michael Clary, of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati. While he is a popular social-media commentator on Reformed theology, he leads a Southern Baptist congregation.

Splits will occur -- because of core beliefs on both sides. Progressives truly believe doctrines must evolve to avoid causing pain to modern believers. Orthodox thinkers in various traditions truly believe they cannot edit what the New Testament describes as the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints."

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

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What did a Boomer priest learn from a year leading a flock of Millennials?

As a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, Father Stephen Noll felt a sense of loss when he learned he would need a smartphone app to attend baseball games.

Noll calls himself a "digital dinosaur, perhaps from the Jurassic period." What he didn't expect, after 50 years of priesthood, was for this digital divide to affect his ministry.

"I am fundamentally app-horrent," he wrote in "Millennial People, Boomer Priest," a book of lessons from his year as a young parish's interim pastor. The big problem was staying in contact with members of Redeemer Anglican Church, in north Pittsburgh. It was even harder to reach potential converts who kept walking through the doors.

"Caving to the need to reach my Millennial parishioners," he wrote, "I learned to text with the help of the voice input mic, which is a good thing since it seems no one answers voice messages -- or even answers the phone at all!"

Noll was 74 when he became interim pastor on May 1, 2021, after the traumas -- in pews and pulpits -- of the coronavirus pandemic. He decided that many young adults were wrestling with anxiety, loneliness and other painful realities that were both modern and ancient.

According to the 2022 American Religious Benchmark Survey, many people stopped attending worship during the pandemic. Surveys before 2020 found that 25% of Americans never attended services. It was 33% in 2022.

But something else was happening during those years. Surveys found that 19% of Americans changed from one religious affiliation to another, including 6% of those who were religiously unaffiliated before COVID-19.

Noll said some of the young adults in his pews were asking hard questions about the brokenness around them, including in their own lives and the homes in which they were raised.

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Olympics debates rage on: Why did Dionysus invade The Lord's Supper tableau?

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Olympics debates rage on: Why did Dionysus invade The Lord's Supper tableau?

The Catholic bishops of France admired the "marvelous display of beauty and joy" in the 2024 Olympics opening rites, but also slammed the blending of Christian sacred art, Greek mythology and the sexual revolution.

"This ceremony unfortunately included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity," said the bishops. "We are thinking of all the Christians on every continent who have been hurt by the outrageousness and provocation of certain scenes."

That was soon followed by an appeal to the International Olympic Committee from a global circle of cardinals and bishops protesting "a grotesque and blasphemous depiction of the Last Supper. … It is hard to understand how the faith of over 2 billion people can be so casually and intentionally blasphemed."

But the Vatican remained silent for more than a week, while online combat raged between clergy, entertainers, academics, diplomats and armies of social-media warriors. Finally, the Holy See released a muted statement that it was "saddened" by the "offence done to many Christians and believers of other religions. … In a prestigious event where the whole world comes together around common values, there should be no allusions that ridicule the religious convictions of many people."

These debates raged on and on because few combatants could agree on what took place, in part because the opening ceremonies were quickly removed from the official Olympics YouTube and NBC Universal accounts.

However, photographs showed 16 or more drag and transgender performers, with one child, posed in "vogueing" stances along one side of a table, in front of the Seine River and Eiffel Tower. The edgy drama also included, with brief nudity, couples and threesomes prancing on a stylized fashion runway.

Eventually, a silver food dish opened to reveal, instead of bread and wine, singer Philippe Katerine -- painted blue -- portraying Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. Pointing to his groin, he sang (translated from French): "Where to hide a revolver when you're completely naked?"

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RFK Jr. offers a testimony about God, faith, heroin and fighting his personal demons

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RFK Jr. offers a testimony about God, faith, heroin and fighting his personal demons

After he decided to kick heroin, the young Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tried to think about daily life in a totally different way.

Rather than trusting his willpower to do the right thing for a whole day, he began dividing each day into 40 or more decisions.

"When the alarm goes off in the morning, do I get immediately out of bed, or do I stay in bed for an extra 20 minutes with my indolent thoughts?", asked Kennedy, speaking to a recent Socrates in the City gathering. "When I reach in the closet and pull out a pair of blue jeans, and all those wire hangers fall on the ground, do I shut the door like I used to and say that I'm too much of a big shot, that's somebody else's job, or do I go in there and clean up my own mess?"

After 14 years of addiction, Kennedy said he tried to act as if each decision was a moral test and God was watching. This was a leap of faith, since his addiction attacked the Catholic faith of his childhood.

This New York City audience -- Socrates events focus on "Life, God and other small topics" -- knew Kennedy would discuss his independent White House campaign and his edgy views on the environment, vaccines, autism, assassinations and similar topics.

Basic questions would be covered, as with previous guests since 2000 -- such as scientist Francis Collins, author Malcolm Gladwell, television legend Dick Cavett, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks of England, Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright and Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, JFK's daughter.

But politics isn't the only reality. Socrates in the City founder and host Eric Metaxas -- a conservative Christian radio host and the New York Times bestselling author of "Bonhoeffer," "Miracles" and other books would ask Kennedy about the role of faith in his complicated and controversial life.

"I was never an atheist -- ever. I was raised in a deeply religious family, and I integrated that," said Kennedy. "My dad was killed when I was 14. I became a heroin addict when I was 15. ... When you're … living against conscience, which is what happens when you're an addict, you tend to push any kind of notion of God off over the periphery of your horizon."

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Should the Vatican cancel art by a world-famous priest accused of abuse?

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Should the Vatican cancel art by a world-famous priest accused of abuse?

When members of the Society of Jesus gather at Borgo Santo Spirito, their headquarters near the Vatican, they worship surrounded by the relics of Jesuit saints and works of sacred art.

This includes the work of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, who the Jesuits expelled in June 2023 after long investigations into allegations that he sexually and emotionally abused as many as 30 women in religious orders. The Vatican excommunicated the Slovenian priest in 2020 -- but quickly withdrew that judgment.

Some abuse, according to alleged victims, took place while nuns were serving as models for Rupnik's art.

The question the Vatican should answer, according to the leader of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, is whether it's time to remove Rupnik's art from Vatican websites and publications, as well as holy sanctuaries.

"We must avoid sending a message that the Holy See is oblivious to the psychological distress that so many are suffering," wrote U.S. Cardinal Seán P. O'Malley of Boston, in a June 26 letter to leaders throughout the Vatican curia. "I ask you to bear this in mind when choosing images to accompany the publication of messages, articles, and reflections through the various communication channels available to us."

O'Malley's full text has not been released, but quotations have appeared in Catholic media, including a report posted on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website.

Still, the Vatican News website continues -- on the June 28 "Saint of the Day" page -- to feature an image of St. Irenaeus drawn from a Rupnik mosaic in the Catholic diplomatic office in Paris. The website of the Rupnik-linked Centro Aletti in Rome documents that his images are displayed in 200-plus locations around the world.