worship

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Our new normal isn't really new -- ancient prayers go online during latest epidemic

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Our new normal isn't really new -- ancient prayers go online during latest epidemic

For centuries, Eastern Orthodox Christians have shared prayers "for the sick, the suffering, the captive and for their safety and salvation" as well as petitions that "we may be delivered from all affliction, wrath and need."

The faithful respond: "Lord, have mercy."

This past Sunday, some worshippers heard modern phrases woven into the ancient cadences of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great.

During the Litany of Fervent Supplication, priests in the Orthodox Church in America added: "O Lord who lovest mankind, deliver us from the impending threat of the Corona Virus. Send thine angel to watch over us and protect us. Grant health and recovery to those suffering from this virus. Guide the hands of physicians and preserve those who are healthy. Enable us to continue to serve our suffering brothers and sisters in peace that together we may glorify thy most honorable and majestic name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages."

Following instructions from our bishop, most members of parishes in the Diocese of the South heard these words while gathered around home computers.

This was part of America's new normal as religious leaders -- some already tech-friendly, others veering into new territory -- worked to develop online forms of worship, education and fellowship. For Catholics, the Orthodox and others in liturgical traditions, all of this is happening at a highly symbolic time -- the penitential season of Lent. Easter is April 12 for Western churches. For the Orthodox, Pascha is April 19.

This is not the season of Great Lent we anticipated, but it is nonetheless a fitting Lenten effort, "explained Archbishop Alexander, OCA bishop of Dallas and the South. In his letter to priests and parishioners he urged believers -- using a monastic image -- to recognize "that this initial response to this pandemic will work for the greater good of our faithful and our neighbors. Use this time of 'social distancing' for prayer and to keep vigil 'in one's cell.' "

Across the nation, some religious congregations met, drawing smaller flocks, while many closed their doors. Things were different at my home Orthodox parish in Oak Ridge, Tenn. We were somewhere in between.

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Autism and mysteries of the Mass: Holy Communion is different from food at home

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Autism and mysteries of the Mass: Holy Communion is different from food at home

Ever since the Last Supper, Catholics have pondered what happens during the Mass when they believe the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus.

"Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering … it has always been the conviction of the Church … that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood," proclaimed the Council of Trent, after the Protestant Reformation.

"This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation. The Eucharistic presence of Christ begins at the moment of the consecration and endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsist."

Believers approach this mystery with the greatest care and respect. This may be hard for children to grasp as they prepare for First Communion.

Now imagine trying to teach this core Catholic doctrine to persons -- young and old -- who have mental and physical disabilities that make it hard, or impossible, for them to acknowledge what is happening in the Mass.

"Because we believe Holy Communion is the Body and Blood or our Lord, we want to be very careful about this," said Father Matthew Schneider, who is known to his Twitter followers as @AutisticPriest.

"This isn't a theology test. No one needs a theology degree to take Holy Communion. We simply need to make sure that they know this is an act in a church rite -- that they are not eating ordinary food like at home. We're trying to find out if they have a basic understanding of what's happening."

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During times of plague and panic, priests do what priests need to do

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During times of plague and panic, priests do what priests need to do

The second wave of influenza in the fall of 1918 was the worst yet and, by the time Father Nicola Yanney reached Wichita, Kansas, a citywide quarantine was in effect.

A 16-year-old girl had already died, creating a sense of panic. The missionary priest -- his territory reached from Missouri to Colorado and from Oklahoma to North Dakota -- couldn't even hold her funeral in the city's new Orthodox sanctuary. As he traveled back to his home church in Kearney, Neb., he kept anointing the sick, hearing confessions and taking Holy Communion to those stricken by the infamous "Spanish flu."

After days of door-to-door ministry in the snow, Yanney collapsed and called his sons to his bedside. Struggling to breathe, he whispered: "Keep your hands and your heart clean." He was one of an estimated 50 million victims worldwide.

A century later, many Orthodox Christians in America -- especially those of Syrian and Lebanese descent -- believe Yanney should be recognized as a saint. And now, as churches face fears unleashed by the coronavirus, many details of his final days of his ministry are highly symbolic.

"Father Nicola got the flu because he insisted on ministering to people who had the flu," said Father Andrew Stephen Damick, creator of "The Equal of Martyrdom," an audio documentary about the man known as "The Apostle to the Plains."

"For priests, there are risks. But you cannot turn away when people are suffering and they need the sacraments of the church. You go to your people and minister to them. This is what priests do."

Few acts in ministry are as intimate as a priest huddled with a seriously ill believer, hearing what could be his or her final confession of sins. Honoring centuries of tradition, Christians in the ancient churches of the East also take Communion from a common chalice, with each person receiving consecrated bread and wine -- mixed together -- from a golden spoon.

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Anglicans in Canada are facing a kind of ecclesiastical near-death experience

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Anglicans in Canada are facing a kind of ecclesiastical near-death experience

When it comes to having priests at altars, the Anglican Church of Canada is in good shape for the next few decades.

But life in the pews has been radically different, creating a crisis that surfaced recently in a blunt report to Canadian bishops.

"In 2018 General Synod was able to collect a complete and mostly reliable set of data … for the first time since 2001," said a report by Rev. Neil Elliot, a priest in the Province of British Columbia and the Yukon. Research from 2017 "shows that the decline observed in earlier data has continued."

 The stunning bottom line: "Projections from our data indicate that there will be no members, attenders or givers in the Anglican Church of Canada by approximately 2040."

Elliot noted that a 2006 report suggested the final Anglicans would exit Canadian pews in 2061. The church's membership had peaked -- as it did for many mainline Christian churches -- in the early 1960s, with 1,358,459 on parish rolls. That number fell to 641,845 in 2001, while Canada's population rose from 18 million to 31 million.

In the 2017 report, Anglican membership fell to 357,123 -- with an average Sunday attendance of 97,421.

Meanwhile, the number of Anglican clergy in Canada rose -- from 2,380 in 1961 to 3,491 in this new report. But other numbers were sobering. For example, the church confirmed 1,997 new members in 2017, while there were 9,074 burials or funeral rites.

"There is no sign of any stabilization in our numbers; if anything the decline is increasing. Some had hoped that our decline had bottomed out, or that programs had been effective in reversing the trends. This is now demonstrably not the case," noted Elliot.

"International comparisons suggest that the decline in the Anglican Church of Canada is faster than in any other Anglican church," although 2018 numbers from the larger Episcopal Church in the United States showed "an even greater rate of decline in attendance than ours."

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

Soon after the Internet boom in the 1990s, the Christian consulting firm WisdomWorks obtained software that could run automated chat groups -- allowing anonymous teens to ask candid questions.

Mark Matlock and his team called the project "Wise Intelligent Guide (WIG)."

Tech-savvy young people were careful, often repeating easy questions over and over to determine if the "bot" was truly autonomous, as opposed to being operated by hidden adults. A typical user would then probe with relatively safe questions -- like "Does God exist?"

Finally, there would be the "actual question the teen wanted to ask, usually about sex, depression, suicide, or abuse," noted Matlock and Barna Group President David Kinnaman, in their new book "Faith for Exiles." Typical questions: "How do I know if I am gay? What does God think about masturbation? What happens to people who commit suicide? I had sex with my boyfriend; what should I do?"

That was two decades ago. Today, most teens would use their omnipresent smartphones and take these personal questions straight to Google -- a secular oracle offering guidance on topics that religious leaders often avoid.

"The church has bubble-wrapped itself in an attempt to avoid thinking about the truly disruptive forms of technology that are everywhere in our world," said Kinnaman, reached by telephone. "Most church leaders think they can just use technology as a way of reaching people. … They aren't looking at the real impact of all this on their people. It's easier just to look the other way."

Meanwhile, practical decisions on tough lifestyle and religious questions often have long-term consequences.

Religious leaders have been forced -- after waves of Pew Research Center polling -- to acknowledge the surge in Millennial Americans (born 1981-1996) who now identify as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" when asked about religion. In a 2019 update, Pew noted that 40% of Millennials are "nones."

The goal of the "Faith for Exiles" study was to find patterns among young Americans (18 to 29 years of age) who were raised as Christians.

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Searching for saints on Google -- for a variety of personal and practical reasons

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Searching for saints on Google -- for a variety of personal and practical reasons

Day after day, Catholics return from sobering hospital visits and type these terms into online search programs -- "cancer" and "patron saint."

This leads them to St. Peregrine Laziosi, a 13th century Italian monk who spent his life serving the sick and destitute. Biographers note that, at age 60, he was mysteriously cured of a gangrenous growth on his right leg.

With additional computer-mouse clicks, cancer patients find prayers like this: "St. Peregrine, whom Holy Mother Church has declared patron of those suffering from cancer, I confidently turn to you for help in my present sickness. I beg your kind intercession. Ask God to relieve me of this sickness, if it be his Holy Will."

Members of ancient Christian churches grow up knowing about their own patron saints, as well as saints linked to their parishes. It's natural for Catholics to identify with saints -- like St. Patrick in Ireland -- linked to their homelands.

But there are times in life when it's natural for believers to seek "companion" saints to enter their prayer lives, said Father James Martin, author of "My Life with the Saints," a commentary on the role of saints first published in 2006.

"Even if you have no pre-existing ties to St. Peregrine, you are going to pray to him for his intercessions when you learn that you have cancer," said Martin. "That's just one of the many ways we get connected to saints at different times in our lives. Sometimes these connections are logical and sometimes they are mysterious. … 

"I tell people that when they find themselves being drawn to a particular saint, it's probably because that saint is already praying for them. In the end, this is all about the Holy Spirit and God's providence."

 It's hard to say why some saints are more popular or famous than others. The Catholic website Aleteia ("truth" or "disclosure" in Greek) recently published a feature entitled, "The top 12 saints according to Google searches."

The top online saint was St. Vincent de Paul of France, which could indicate that many people were looking for St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores.

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After wrestling with sorrow and cancer, Anne Graham Lotz inches back into ministry

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After wrestling with sorrow and cancer, Anne Graham Lotz inches back into ministry

Anne Graham Lotz has done her share of thinking about the past, present and future of evangelism -- which is understandable since her father Billy Graham liked to call her the "best preacher in the family."

But in recent years, Lotz has had other serious issues to think and pray about, while caregiving for her husband before his death in 2015 and then her own surgery and a year of treatments after being diagnosed with breast cancer. 

At this point, Lotz believes "that the Lord has healed me." Thus, she is inching back into public life. 

She has been doing lots of thinking about the health of the modern church in an era of strained family ties, a rising tide of loneliness and legions of online demons lurking on digital screens. Consider, for example, a sobering dinner conversation she had with the president of a major seminary, as described in "Jesus In Me," her new book about the Holy Spirit.

"As we conversed, he confided that the number one problem that he faced with students at his school was pornography," wrote Lotz. She was shocked and asked him to repeat his statement. "Was he talking about the men and women who were studying at his seminary in preparation for Christian ministry as pastors, youth leaders, music directors, Bible teachers, seminary professors and other leaders in the church?"

Yes, the seminary president replied. The problem surfaced when staff examined the online search files on computers in a hidden corner of the campus library that students assumed was private.

Lotz is still struggling with that image and all that it symbolizes. 

Thus, when asked about the future of evangelism -- such as the "Just Give Me Jesus" revivals she led from 2000-2012 -- she stressed that she needs to focus her AnGeL Ministries work elsewhere, at least for awhile.

"The key is whether people are actually trying to live Christian lives and touch other people," said the 71-year-old Bible teacher, in a recent telephone interview. "People need something larger and more authentic than having more social-media followers on some website. ...

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Define 'evangelical,' please (2019 edition)

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Define 'evangelical,' please (2019 edition)

There is no record that political pollsters in ancient Rome even knew that Jesus of Nazareth told a Jewish leader named Nicodemus that he needed to be "born again" in order see the Kingdom of God.

Germans in the Protestant Reformation embraced that "born again" image and called themselves the "evangelisch." Then in 1807, English poet Robert Southey was one of the first writers to turn the adjective "evangelical" -- think "evangelical" preaching -- into a plural noun "evangelicals." There was no earthquake in European politics.

But America changed forever when Bible Belt Democrat Jimmy Carter shocked journalists by saying that he had been "born again." That firestorm led Newsweek editors to grab a phrase from pollster George Gallup and proclaim 1976 the "Year of the Evangelical." Lots of politicos noticed, including a rising Republican star named Ronald Reagan.

The rest is a long story. 

"The news media and polling agencies realized that the 'born again' vote was a seminal political factor," noted historian Thomas Kidd, in a recent address at Wheaton College, the alma mater of the late evangelist Billy Graham.

"The Gallup organization," he added, "began asking people whether they had been 'born again.' The emergence of EVANGELICAL as a common term in news coverage of politics was a major landmark in the development of the contemporary evangelical crisis. … The media's frequent use of 'born again' and 'evangelical' connected those terms to political behavior."

More some evangelical insiders relished this attention, while denominational leaders and other mainstream evangelicals failed to realize that "they were losing control of the public's perception of their movement," said the scholar from Baylor University.

But one thing would become crystal clear, according to Kidd's new book, "Who is An Evangelical?" His bottom line: "The gospel did not make news. But politics did."

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Union seminary holds another interfaith rite, causing an explosion that rocked Twitter-verse

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Union seminary holds another interfaith rite, causing an explosion that rocked Twitter-verse

When describing the life and work of St. Francis of Assisi, his admirers -- environmentalists as well as theologians -- usually quote his "Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon."

It begins with the Catholic mystic stressing that to God alone belong "all glory, all honor and all blessings."

Then St. Francis, who died in 1226, proclaims: "Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun. … Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair. Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air."

This famous hymn teaches that God is Creator and that Francis is thankful for all of creation -- rain, wind, fire, plants, humanity and even "Sister Death."

That wasn't the doctrinal equation many Twitter users saw in a recent message from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The seminary tweet described a chapel service linked to a class -- "Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response" -- taught by the Rev. Claudio Carvalhaes, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) theologian from Brazil.

"Today in chapel, we confessed to plants," said the seminary statement. "Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor. What do you confess to the plants in your life?" The tweet showed a student facing potted ferns, palms, cattails, a lily and other houseplants.

"The prayers were said to the plants," confirmed Carvalhaes, reached by telephone. "The way we understand this, we are not praying to the plants as God. … We were seeing the plants in a way that the indigenous peoples see them -- as living things with lives of their own. …

"We were speaking to the plants as part of the 'we' of God. We are all part of God's creation -- both mankind and the rest of creation."

The Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary heard a different message. "If you do not worship the Creator, you will inevitably worship the creation, in one way or another. That is the primal form of idolatry," he said, in a podcast from the Louisville campus, which has 1,731 full-time students.

The Union rite created a furor because of this seminary's fame as a center for progressive theology and its academic association with nearby Columbia University on Manhattan's West Side.