Archive for diversity

Someone else’s servant

December 17, 2013 / / Comments Off on Someone else’s servant

sculpture by Michael Grab

Accept those whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat everything, but another person, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted that person.  Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master they stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

Some consider one day more sacred than another; others consider every day alike. Everyone should be fully convinced in their own mind.  Those who regard one day as special do so to the Lord. Those who eat meat do so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and those who abstain do so to the Lord and give thanks to God. For we do not live to ourselves alone and we do not die to ourselves alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.  For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat your brother or sister with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat.

 

Romans 14: 1-10, Today’s New International Version

 

Denominational wisdom from Romans.

Category: Bible, community, diversity /

Seeing the Church from another point of view

October 21, 2013 / / 2 comments

I’m always interested to see how other Christians “do church.” It helps me retain some sense of the strangeness of God, and it keeps me from thinking that what I’m used to is normal and everything else is not-quite-right. I recently visited Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and here’s a bit of what I saw. (Click on the thumbnails to see the full image, then again for a larger image.)

Category: Catholic, Church, churches, diversity, Pentecostal, photography, Presbyterian, travel / Tags:

Truths in unexpected places

May 30, 2013 / / Comments Off on Truths in unexpected places

True of humanity and true of the Church:

 

“The only way really to understand your position and its worth is to understand the opposite.

That doesn’t mean the crazy guy on the radio who is spewing hate, it means the decent human truths of all the people who feel the need to listen to that guy. You are connected to those people. They’re connected to him. You can’t get away from it. This connection is part of contradiction. It is the tension I was talking about. This tension isn’t about two opposite points, it’s about the line in between them, and it’s being stretched by them. We need to acknowledge and honor that tension, and the connection that that tension is a part of. Our connection not just to the people we love, but to everybody, including people we can’t stand and wish weren’t around. The connection we have is part of what defines us on such a basic level.”

–from Joss Whedon’s 2013 commencement address at Wesleyan University

 

Category: diversity, Holy Spirit /

With sweet accord

October 16, 2012 / / 2 comments

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
from: Project Gutenberg eText 18444

 

I’m constantly being surprised by the unlikely, peregrine paths of grace.

There was a time when English church singing was limited to settings of Biblical poetry and especially the Psalms. Isaac Watts (1674-1748), a prolific and popular writer of over 500 hymns, helped to change that.  His works (which include “Joy to the World” and “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”) are now sung worldwide by Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, and Episcopalians.

 

 

Here’s a well-known Watts hymn, “We’re Marching to Zion” (sometimes titled “Come Ye That Love the Lord”) from The Redemption Hymnal.

 

 

Most of us are familiar with this type of congregational singing. Another form of hymn singing is “lining out,” a form of call and response where the leader first sings a line which is then repeated by the congregation. Lining out was especially useful in churches with few hymnals and many people who could not read.  In African-American musical tradition, lining out is also known as “Dr. Watts hymn singing” though not all of the texts sung were written by Watts. This words to this hymn, “I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry,” first appeared in Watts’ The Psalms of David. 

 

And if being a hymnist was not enough, Watts was also a logician.  His logic textbook Logic, or The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth With a Variety of Rules to Guard Against Error in the Affairs of Religion and Human Life, as well as in the Sciences, went through 20 editions over the course of a hundred years. His writings for children were so well known that one of his poems was parodied by Lewis Carroll (himself a logician). But of all these many accomplishments, Isaac Watts is best remembered as the “Father of English Hymnody” who enriched Christians’ experience of worship in ways he could surely never have imagined.

Category: African-American, diversity, hymns, music / Tags: , ,
 
Wordpress Theme by ThemeZee