Tag: Christianity
-
Experience Matters
Another article I wrote for the Undocumented blog has now been posted. “Many church members are too afraid to come to church anymore.” I was attending a meeting of ministry leaders when the well-respected Hispanic pastor stood to share. He told us how the police had begun parking near their church building on Sunday mornings,…
-
“…the man at the end of the Protestant road…”
I am, maybe, the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for as I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to…
-
Leaving Christianity?
I’ve been a pastor in three widely different contexts and each has brought the same kind of dispiriting and frustrating conversation. Too many times I’ve listened as disgruntled or despairing men and women have wondered, nervously, whether or not they could remain Christian. I’m tired of these conversations not because I don’t sympathize with the…
-
“…when human time and God’s time met…”
The sabbath was the day when human time and God’s time met, when the day-to-day succession of tasks and sorrows was set aside and one entered a different sort of time, celebrating the original sabbath and looking forward to the ultimate one. This was the natural moment to celebrate, to worship, to pray, to study…
-
Christianity in the Middle East: Collateral Damage?
Back in 2008 I linked to David Aikman’s commentary in Christianity Today, “Suffocating the Faithful”, about the massive migration of Christians from Iraq as a result of the US invasion. A few days ago Doonsebury picked up the same theme and a recent Pew study on global Christianity notes that, “Although Christianity began in [the…
David W. Swanson 