Consistent Life Ethic
A Help-Portrait photo illustrates a first portrait of a mother and daughter. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Cowart via RNS
Portraits may seem like a staple in every home, but for many families, a professional photo is beyond reach.
Each year, the nonprofit Help-Portrait pulls together professional photographers to spend one Saturday taking free portraits of people who normally can’t afford it.
Help-Portrait founder Jeremy Cowart is a celebrity photographer who has shot famous names such as Taylor Swift, Tim Tebow and the Kardashians and has been published in publications such as Rolling Stone, People magazine and The New York Times.
Like a number of Christians driven by their faith to set up humanitarian nonprofits, Cowart is motivated to do good.
Soldiers from all eras have faced difficult moral dilemmas. lazlo/Shutterstock
As we move into the Sundays following Christmas and begin to anticipate Epiphany, we face the terror of the coming week’s Gospel reading, the Massacre (or Slaughter) of the Innocents. While there are a number of stories in the Bible that are difficult to read/hear, Herod’s murdering the innocent children of Bethlehem in his attempt to kill a potential threat to his throne must be among the top.
Herod’s brutality is legendary. Most of what we know comes from the Jewish historian, Josephus. Matthew records that Herod became distraught when he learned from the Magi that an astrological sign had indicated the birth of a Judean King (2:1-8). When the Magi did not return to report the location of this newborn King, Herod realized that he been tricked and “he was infuriated, and he sent and killed the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (2:16). While scholars debate whether this event is historical or not, it is certainly consistent with what we learn about Herod from Josephus.
Cast members of “Duck Dynasty." Photo courtesy Duck Commander
The “Duck Dynasty” family issued a statement Thursday evening supporting patriarch Phil Robertson and throwing the future of their successful hit reality show into jeopardy.
The A&E cable channel has put patriarch Phil Robertson, 67, on “indefinite” hiatus from filming after anti-gay remarks he made in the January issue of GQ erupted into debate about free speech.
Now the clan is thanking fans for their support, but isn’t happy about the cable channel’s decision.
Cookies and milk left for Santa. Photo courtesy Shutterstock / via RNS
Nearly one in three Americans, including many with no little children at home and those with no religious identity, say they pretend Santa will visit their house on Christmas Eve.
Overall, 31 percent of U.S. adults play up the Santa role in their holiday season, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
Jesus, however, is still the star of Christmas.
Today’s coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte or maybe an iced caramel macchiato? The ancient Greeks were just as sophisticated in the way they talked about love, recognizing six different varieties. They would have been shocked by our crudeness in using a single word both to whisper “l love you” over a candlelit meal and to casually sign an email “lots of love.”
So what were the six loves known to the Greeks? And how can they inspire us to move beyond our current addiction to romantic love, which has 94 percent of young people hoping — but often failing — to find a unique soul mate who can satisfy all their loving needs?
The Sojourners family
Time became suspended for my family and me when Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines nearly a month ago.
Days blurred into one another as my mom attempted to contact her family in Leyte, one of the Philippine islands directly hit by Haiyan. With her mother, siblings and family members still living in the Philippines, my mom feared the worst as she helplessly watched news reports of the typhoon’s devastation and destruction.
Together, as a family, we waited in agony for answers. Would my grandma and relatives survive? If so, when and how would they contact us without power or phone lines? Would this storm wipe out every connection we have to my mother’s homeland?
Two weeks after Haiyan upended our lives, grief gave way to joy as we received word of my family’s safety. My nanay (grandma) and several of my titas (aunts) and titos (uncles) lost their homes, but they managed to survive one of the most powerful storms recorded in modern history.
As you can imagine, there was much to be grateful for when I gathered with my family for Thanksgiving. At our table, we gave thanks to God for this miracle, knowing all too well that many Filipino families were not as fortunate or still waiting for news about their loved ones. We also remembered those who helped us during this time of uncertainty, especially the Sojourners community.
Airbrush illustration courtesy leonello calvetti via Shutterstock. Via RNS.
While church planners listened, a five-person focus group described life outside the congregation’s doors: A world falling apart.
Families are in disarray, the group said. Parents are refusing, or unable, to do the basic work of parenting, from giving guidance to saying “no.” Instead, they are prepping their children to join a national epidemic of narcissism.
Obesity is rampant, along with obesity-related diseases such as diabetes. Infant mortality is worsening as pregnant girls routinely continue smoking, doing drugs and drinking during pregnancy.
Clueless parents are buying heroin — today’s drug of choice — for their children, so the little ones don’t get beat up by dealers. Parents buy cases of beer for their underage children so they can drink at home, rather than drive drunk. Methamphetamine usage is widespread.
FlyRights app image courtesy FlyRights.org
The Sikh Coalition is updating a mobile app that allows travelers to report complaints about the Transportation Security Administration from the airport.
The coalition created the FlyRights app in April 2012 because of concerns that TSA officers profiled travelers for their appearance — and Sikhs in particular because of their turbans.
The TSA insists it doesn’t profile travelers. Civil rights complaints are investigated and “immediate action” is taken if substantiated, the agency said.
The original FlyRights app, created in coordination with the TSA, allowed a traveler to submit a complaint at the same time to the coalition and to the TSA for investigation.
The parsonage of First Methodist Church in Monroe, Wis. Photo via RNS, by James Steakley
A federal judge has ruled that an Internal Revenue Service exemption that allows clergy to shield a portion of their salary from federal income taxes is unconstitutional.
The clergy housing exemption applies to an estimated 44,000 ministers, priests, rabbis, imams, and others. If the ruling stands, some clergy members could experience an estimated 5 to 10 percent cut in take-home pay.
The suit was filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation on grounds that the housing allowance violates the separation of church and state and the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The group’s founders have said that if tax-exempt religious groups are allowed a housing subsidy, other tax-exempt groups, such as FFRF, should get one, too.
President Kennedy’s casket lies in state in the White House. Photo: Via RNS /Abbie Rowe, court. JFK Presidential Library, Boston
On this date 50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy was assasinated while in Dallas on a campaign tour. As the nation remembers this event, we reflect on President Kennedy's life and death.
Walter Cronkite, visibly emotional, announced the president's death on a CBS News bulletin.
“Personal Preference by Religion and Race/Ethnicity” chart courtesy of Pew Research Center. Via RNS
Death may be inevitable, but one in three Americans – including most blacks and Hispanics – want doctors to never quit fighting it.
And that number has nearly doubled in 23 years, a new survey finds.
In 1990, 15 percent of U.S. adults said doctors should do everything possible for a patient, even in the face of incurable illness and pain. Today, 31 percent hold that view, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project.
The majority of U.S. adults (66 percent) still say there are circumstances when a patient should be allowed to die. At the same time, however, the never-say-die view calling for nonstop aggressive treatment has increased across every religion, race, ethnicity, and level of education.
Photo by Abbie Rowe, National Parks Service, courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Facing crowded pews and heavy hearts, Dallas clergy took to the pulpits on Nov. 24, 1963 to try to make sense of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy just two days before.
“The ministers saw the assassination as an unwelcome opportunity for some serious, city-wide soul-searching,” said Tom Stone, an English professor at Southern Methodist University, who has studied the sermons delivered that day.
“Though Dallas could not be reasonably blamed for the killing, it needed to face up to its tolerance of extremism and its narrow, self-centered values,” Stone said.
As they finished their messages, some, including the Rev. William H. Dickinson of Highland Park Methodist Church and the Rev. William A. Holmes of Northaven Methodist Church, were handed notes: assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had just been gunned down by Jack Ruby.
The word Sunday in cut out magazine letters on a cork board. Photo courtesy Thinglass via Shutterstock
In a tech newsletter I read, two colleagues addressed the end of the world of the personal computer that they spent three decades mastering.
There will be no more building PCs from scratch, no more tinkering with the innards, no more fine-tuning the operating system.
“The evolution of the PC industry over the last several years has not been good to the old-school PC professional, particularly for those whose careers have been heavily hardware-oriented,” said the writer.
Many clergy and lay leaders are in exactly this position.
1,600 men and women marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht at Westminster Abbey on Sunday. RNS photo by Trevor Grundy
At an emotional worship service, considered one of the largest gatherings of Christians and Jews, some 1,600 British men and women filed into Westminster Abbey Sunday to mark the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a series of coordinated attacks carried out by Nazi paramilitaries and civilians against Jews throughout Hitler’s Germany and parts of Austria between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938.
More than 90 German Jews were killed and 30,000 more sent to concentration camps.
During the hourlong service, a candelabra from the Belsize Square Synagogue in central London was processed through the abbey where England’s kings and queens are buried.
If you were on Facebook or Twitter last week, you probably saw the CBS interview with Mandy Patinkin. He’s probably best known for this line from the classic movie The Princess Bride:
“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The Princess Bride was released when I was 16. My friends and I would throw that line back and forth whenever we competed against one another. Monopoly. Basketball. Chess. Nintendo. Rock, paper, scissors. It didn’t matter. Like anyone with a pulse during the late 1980s, we repeated that phrase endlessly. It was our favorite line in the movie.
That and “Mawwiage …”
But that’s not Mandy’s favorite line.
Rather than stumbling into single-serving citizenship, what if we learned to be a body together? Bulatnikov / Shutterstock
This morning at breakfast, I was reading an article in the newspaper about how the Affordable Care Act is negatively affecting some individuals — especially those who buy their own insurance, rather than receiving it through an employer. The article was interesting, but what struck me the most was the way the problem was framed. Rather than approaching the story from a public policy angle, the article mainly focused on the reaction of consumers of health-care goods and services. The crux of the article was whether some individuals should be required to buy a product they might not want or need so that other individuals could have affordable access to health-care products they need desperately but might not be able to afford under the old regime.
The dilemma was presented as a story of tension between healthier consumers and less healthy consumers fighting to get the best deal for their health-care dollars. But could there be another way of thinking about health care, and about our society as a whole? Is there a framework that would allow us to consider these questions in a way that assumed connection, caring, and community between individuals, rather than the zero-sum competition of the market?
Ann Romney holds a copy of her latest book. Photo via RNS/by Josh Morgan, Orange County Register
Ann Romney is a gracious woman.
Such is my first and lasting impression of Mitt Romney’s wife of 44 years and matriarch of a Romney clan that includes the couple’s five sons and more than 20 grandchildren.
When I arrived at a Mormon bookstore on a recent Thursday evening, the line of fans waiting to get Romney’s autograph on her new book, The Romney Family Table: Sharing Home-Cooked Recipes and Favorite Traditions, extended around the block.
Beer being poured from a tap. Photo vai RNS/courtesy Vladimirs Koskins via Shutterstock
The Archdiocese of St. Louis is putting an end to alcohol sales at youth-related events.
Under a new policy that goes into effect Friday, drinking will not be allowed at any event that is directed primarily toward minors.
That means parents will no longer be allowed to throw back a few beers during their kids’ soccer, volleyball, and softball games. And athletic associations will no longer rake in revenue from beer sales at their concession stands.
Foster the City is DC127's first major event, taking place on Nov. 2. Photo courtesy of DC127
"Foster care touches on multiple issues and engaging the system is a way to comprehensively engage some of the biggest challenges to a city’s flourishing."
There is a new initiative in Washington, D.C. that hopes to so profoundly change the foster care system in the city that the supply of foster homes will far exceed the demand for them. DC127 is an organization committed to “reversing the list” of children and youth who are waiting for a foster or adoptive home. By reminding churches of the biblical mandate to care for widows and orphans, they have started a network in D.C. that spans Christian denominational lines.
The movement is beginning to gain some traction and DC127 is gearing up for its first event on November 2.
Pope John Paul II elevated Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago to cardinal in a Feb. 2, 1983 consistory. RNS file photo
The election of Pope Francis in March heralded a season of surprises for the Catholic Church, but perhaps none so unexpected – and unsettling for conservatives – as the re-emergence of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as a model for the American Catholic future.
While there is no indication that Francis knows the writings of Bernardin, who died in 1996, many say the pope’s remarks repeatedly evoke Bernardin’s signature teachings on the “consistent ethic of life” – the view that church doctrine champions the poor and vulnerable from womb to tomb – and on finding “common ground” to heal divisions in the church.