Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Guts and the Glue
"Even with a broader definition of church attendance, classifying a regular attendee as someone who shows up at least three out of every eight Sundays, only 23–25% of Americans would fit this category. Olson notes that an additional million church attendees would increase the percentage from 17.7% to only 18%. "You"d have to find 80 million more people that churches forgot to count to get to 40%."
Clearly, a disconnect between what Americans say and what they actually do has created a sense of a resilient church culture when, in fact, it may not exist."
source
OMG!
What is the answer? (There is an answer to every problem, but is is rarely simple - and ofter plural [e.g. what are the answers?].)
Churches continue to feel the effects of "the Great [Bush] Recession" of 2007 as contributions dropped $1.2 billion [for the year], according to the National Council of Churches' 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.
Membership trends in denominations reporting remain the same [e.g. declining attendance across-the-board], with [a few] growing churches still growing and [the majority of] declining churches still declining..."
source
A lot more empty churches are for sale these days - with no takers.
A Virginia church for sale.
more
Price reduced $100,000
Re-purposed churches too!
White Elephants!
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Just when you thought you could take a week off...
Saturday, June 15, 2013
So God exists but what is existence?
Brad's new book is out and my sister, who was visiting for a few days, read it. She reads very quickly but she thought this book needed to be read twice so she packed it up and took it up to Reno! She rates it 5 stars (out of 5).
So far (I am a slow reader), I get that Brad ponders the same questions as Herman Melville and a lot of other folks. I ponder the same questions from a different perspective. The physical world clicks on and off like light through a shutter in an old-fashioned movie projector (you know, before electronic cinema). Physicists call it "quantum" meaning there are increments but no half-increments or fractional increments.
When we 'click off,' we are nothing and yet when we click back on, we are almost the same - just a little older. There is no past - it is gone forever. There is no future (it has yet to click on). There is just THIS.
And then there is the TRINITY. I don't mean the father, son, ghost bundle. I mean the time, space, mass trinity. Energy and mass are one and the same thing - like ice and water. Time exists only in the context of space and space exists only in the context of time. The longer (in time) we have been away from the recent big bang, the farther away we are from the origin. So time and space are two manifestations of the same thing - gravity. So, as they say, you have the strong force and the weak force - and (perhaps) nothing else!
But that is NOT what Brad writes about. He is talking about that 'other' thing. That gate keeper not born of a woman who is outside of mass and energy, space and time. Illogical. Me, not Brad.
So, I have NOT talked about the contents of Brad's book. You have to read it for yourself. It's very very close to 5 stars IMO.
I remain seriously retired.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Herman Melville's Religious Journey
"Moby Dick was the Da Vinci Code of Melville's time."
Yep.
And Melville, it seems, was a Unitarian.
Unitarians are Trinitarians without the trinity (father, son, holy ghost bundle). It's not the father, it's not the son, and it's not the holy ghost. It's almost Buddhist! What do Unitarians do at Xmas and Easter? Do they 'do' Holly and Lilies? I wonder...
Unitarianism is a reaction to Calvinism in the same way Buddhism is a reaction to Brahmanism. There is that nasty Michael Servetus affair for Calvinists to deal with. It was SO 12th century to behave in this way. I am not JUDGING Calvin - his sadistic actions speak louder than his feeble words. Calvin had chronic pulmonary tuberculosis. It was, in his view, predestined by god. He was not the kind of guy you would invite over for coffee - or a hot bottle of sake.
And THAT makes "Herman Melville's Religious Journey" worth reading!
Melville's mother was a Calvinist (Dutch Reformed Church). And his dad was a Unitarian.
From his writings, it was obvious that Melville was poking fun at FUNDIES.
The American Revolution was as much 'against the church' as it was 'against royalty.' And this brief book describes the turf of Melville's day.
Melville's life followed the doubt, analysis, reflection, awareness path that is so rare in the west.
This book is quite remarkable in pointing out this little detail - call it the satori** of Herman Melville.
The novelette 'Billy Budd, Sailor' is the first book by Melville that you should read (even before Moby Dick). Billy Budd is about more than law and ethics. Billy Budd is not merely about good and evil in the microcosm of a ship but rather about Melville himself - not understood by the general public because he - in the perception of the unwashed masses - was tongue tied. Therefore Melville was a commercial failure in his own day. What he wanted to say, he could not say. What his readers gathered from his works was NOT the message he was trying to convey! Yet, today he is generally recognized - because of the three-dimensional depth of Moby Dick - as the greatest author in the history of American English literature. It is unfair to think the average high school student can gain much from Moby Dick. Indeed, only the able among the college crowd gain much.
*Five United States presidents were Unitarians
**
Saturday, November 17, 2012
To ascend is to fall...
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