worship

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Dolly Parton: Was she a "none of the above" believer or a follower of Jesus?

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Dolly Parton: Was she a "none of the above" believer or a follower of Jesus?

When Robert Lee Parton died in 2000, the illiterate former sharecropper asked his large musical family to sing "If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven)," his favorite country-gospel song.

"If we never meet again this side of heaven / As we struggle through this world and its strife / There's another meeting place somewhere in heaven / By the river of life," they sang.

Recalling that family salute to the eternal ties that bind led his daughter Dolly Parton to ask that Albert E Brumley's hymn be sung, once again, at her private August 28 funeral.

Celebrating the country music legend is an honor "mixed with absolute pride and great sadness," stressed Bryan Seaver, the son of Parton's sister Cassie Parton, in the family's announcement of her death.

"But sadness lies with us, not with Dolly," said Seaver, who served as Parton's security director and also spoke in her funeral. "Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus. Surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens."

Like her nearly 59-year marriage to construction worker Carl Dean, Parton's faith was something she never hid, but the details were mysterious enough to cause chatter.

"Very few artists -- outside of strictly gospel -- are able to clearly articulate the relationship between their music and their faith," said Steve Beard, a contributor to "Spiritual Journeys," a book about the spiritual lives of musical icons. But one thing is certain, he said, via email: "Dolly was raised to believe in and preach a God of love. She would be quick to point that out and leave the fine and important details of theology to eternity."

Parton grew up in mountain churches, with a grandfather who was a fire-and-brimstone Pentecostal preacher and also with ties to Robert F. Thomas, a Methodist missionary doctor who delivered many babies -- including Parton, the fourth of 12 children in the family's one-bedroom cabin.

In her 1994 autobiography, Parton said she never lost her faith, but it certainly evolved: "One day as I prayed in earnest, I broke through some sort of spirit wall and found God. … Not as a chastising, bombastic bully but as a friend I could talk to on a one-to-one basis."

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Catholic bishop, in public letter, urges Pope Leo XIV to offer doctrinal clarity -- now

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Catholic bishop, in public letter, urges Pope Leo XIV to offer doctrinal clarity -- now

Cardinals, archbishops and bishops have many ways to communicate with Vatican officials and even the pope himself, outside of occasional personal meetings.

In the digital age, one blunt way to reach Pope Leo XIV is to write a candid letter and post it online. That's what Bishop Robert Mutsaerts of the Netherlands, auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of 's-Hertogenbosch, did recently.

"Holy Father," he began, with "reverence for the office entrusted to you as successor of Saint Peter, and in communion with the Church which Christ built upon the apostles, I address you with this open letter. I don't do so lightly."

What followed was one bishop's heart cry for the pope to speak candidly about why believers should cling to ancient truths, even while struggling with the riptides of modern life.

Peter, the first pope, "received from Christ not only the commission to unite the brothers, but also to strengthen them in the faith," wrote Mutsaerts. "Ultimately, the world gains little from a Church that merely repeats what the world itself already thinks."

After years of "synodality" meetings built on dialogue with modern Catholics and church critics, the bishop offered hard questions: "Not: how many reports were written? Not: how many people participated? But: has faith become stronger? Has Christ been proclaimed more clearly? Has Catholic identity deepened? Have more people come to convert? Is Sunday Mass better attended? Are there more priestly vocations? …Has greater reverence for the Eucharist emerged? Has the moral teaching of the Church become clearer? Has missionary courage increased?"

The auxiliary bishop's superior, Bishop Gerard Johannes Nicolaus de Korte, quickly distanced himself from these words, while debates continued online.

The context for the Mutsaerts letter is larger than headline grabbing debates about the use of the Latin Mass, bleak attendance trends in Western nations, Catholic politicians clashing with church teachings and same-sex union blessings in many European Catholic churches.

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Once upon a time, most churches had "choirs" and there were even "choir directors"

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Once upon a time, most churches had "choirs" and there were even "choir directors"

For most of the 20th century, the typical American church had a room containing rows of chairs, shelves stacked with music and cabinets full of robes and contrasting stoles for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses of various sizes.

This was a "choir room" and these singers were led by a "choir director."

Times have changed. These days, most up-to-date churches have "praise bands," with a few skilled vocalists, guitarists, drummers and keyboardists with stacks of synthesizers. And most church members have smartphone calendars with zero room left for a choir.

"It's often about time, now more than ever, especially for 20- and 30-somethings. A lot of them have children, but people had children in the '60s," said Mark Cabaniss, president and CEO of the Jubilate Music Group, near Nashville. "That was a different era and a different world. It's hard to even get kids into children's choirs, today. … They're too busy playing soccer or T-ball or whatever."

Cabaniss has directed choirs for 40 years, while composing and arranging music for ensembles of all kinds. He joined a choir at age 6 and began directing church choirs in college.

"You have to be very sensitive to people's time," he stressed, reached by Zoom. "The days of two-hour rehearsals are over. Even a 90-minute one is a tough stretch. … It's all about time, time, time, if you're trying to recruit people into the choir."

While the COVID years were a disaster, the trends -- shrinking choirs, with mic'd up praise bands on stage -- had been clear for several decades.

In 1998, the National Congregations Study said the number of U.S. churches with choirs was already down to 50%, noted Will Whittaker, writing for Baptist News Global. He is the author of the book "Cultivating Intergenerational Worship."

Churches with choirs fell to 40% by 2019 -- before the pandemic.

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New rites and painful old wrongs as tattoo culture spreads in modern America

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New rites and painful old wrongs as tattoo culture spreads in modern America

Struggling with the loss of her child, a mother asked Father Peter Jon Gillquist a question that pastors are hearing more often -- about getting a tattoo.

"When her child died," he explained, she "wanted to have the child's name tattooed across her heart. Why? Grief. She wanted to always carry the name of that child as close to her heart as she could possibly get … and bear it."

Getting, or keeping, a tattoo is "not a legalistic thing," he said, during a forum recorded at All Saints Orthodox Church, his parish in Bloomington, Indiana. "The question is, 'If you have a tattoo, why do you have a tattoo? What is it for?' "

Searchers find clashing answers online. Many believers quote Leviticus: "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh … nor tattoo any marks on you." Others note this biblical instruction to the Corinthians: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?"

Some believers, noted Gillquist, argue that since their body is a temple, they can decorate it. Others say tattoos are linked to paganism or, in the Roman world, represented punishment, torture or identity, such as markings on soldiers or slaves.

For some Christians, such as Egyptian Copts, tattoos -- inked on wrists -- are more than symbols. Cross tattoos tell persecutors: To remove these crosses you will have to cut our wrists.

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Memory eternal: Wichita's smiling bookstore hero is gone, but his dream lives on

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Memory eternal: Wichita's smiling bookstore hero is gone, but his dream lives on

Theologians will travel far and wide searching for the perfect book, but few would think to shop near the Flint Hills of Eastern Kansas. 

Metropolitan Saba Esper, leader of the Antiochian Orthodox archdiocese in North America, was searching for a rare book by Oliver Clément of Paris -- the translation of a complex work written in French. While in Wichita two years ago, he went to Eighth Day Books to consult with owner Warren Farha.

"He smiled with his familiar joy, went to a far corner of the bookstore, and brought it to me. I could hardly imagine that he would have it -- yet there it was, in English," said the archbishop, in a letter read to mourners who filled the Cathedral of St. George for the May 26 funeral rites for Farha.

Metropolitan Saba, originally from Syria, first encountered Farha during a 1995 trip to America that included a lengthy stay in Wichita.

"I was struck by his bright and cheerful face, which seemed to tell you that he came to you from a world purer and more radiant than the one in which we live," he added. "His warm smile, his spontaneous innocence, his quiet voice, and his remarkable calm -- these were all signs of God's presence within him and indications of a light descending upon him from on high."

Farha was more than an entrepreneur who built what the New York Times once described as a touchstone that "serves as a secret handshake among Christian book lovers, and its following reaches far beyond the heartland city it serves." It became a hub for conferences and projects with traditional Catholics, Lutherans and the Orthodox.

In an age of cookie-cutter chains and Internet stores, Eighth Day Books only sells books that its team truly wants visitors to read. The shelves are packed and floors stacked with around 46,000 books on its three stories and in the "Hobbit Hole" basement for children.

Farha was constantly asked if he was running a "Christian bookstore."

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Concerning God, UFOs, angels, demons and centuries of mystery

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Concerning God, UFOs, angels, demons and centuries of mystery

For centuries, stargazers of many kinds have debated the meaning of unidentified objects in the heavens and encounters with mysterious beings on earth.

"Each new discovery, even every new theory, is held at first to have the most wide-reaching theological and philosophical consequences. It is seized by unbelievers as the basis for a new attack on Christianity," noted Oxford don C.S. Lewis, in a 1958 essay, "Will We Lose God in Outer Space?" This was years after the Christian apologist finished his science-fiction trilogy that imagined contacts between humanity and extraterrestrials. 

After the "novelty has been chewed over by real theologians, real scientists and real philosophers, both sides find themselves pretty much where they were before," Lewis added. The big question remains: Are there other beings with "what we call 'rational souls'?"

In 2014, the Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno wrote a book with this title, "Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?" He stated, with "whatever authority I have as a scientist and as one of the 'Official Astronomers' at the Vatican Observatory: Neither I, nor anyone I know, has any evidence that extraterrestrials exist."

The latest media storm was triggered by this Truth Social post by President Donald Trump: "Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

The first release included 170-plus files, beginning in the 1940s, ranging from encounters reported by farmers to videos filmed by U.S. military pilots.

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Soaring Orthodox crosses at monastery in a holler in the mountains of West Virginia

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Soaring Orthodox crosses at monastery in a holler in the mountains of West Virginia

There is nothing unusual about turning a corner in West Virginia's maze of rough mountain roads and seeing churches with plain white walls and big porches.

But the new sanctuary at the Hermitage of the Holy Cross -- 10 miles of twists and turns into a holler outside the town of Wayne -- offers a variation on that vision. Its green-metal roof has domes resembling medieval Russian helmets, topped with golden cupolas and soaring Slavic crosses.

"When you go to the monastery you begin to think that you're driving off the edge of the world, but then you come around the bend and they've built this whole civilization up there," said Andrew Gould, the Orthodox artist from Charleston, South Carolina, who designed this church for a compound of log-cabins and rustic buildings.

The goal was to blend Orthodox tradition and the simplicity of the local culture.

"We needed people to see this building and immediately say, 'That's a church. That's a beautiful church.' It is always my goal to design churches that are linked to Orthodox traditions but still look like churches to people here in America, even in Appalachia," he said.

The church can hold 50 monks and 150 worshippers -- but the giant, wraparound porch can welcome twice that for feast-day celebrations and special events, especially on rainy mountain days.

"The porch was something we had in the plans, but it is serving a purpose greater than what we intended. It was something God intended," said Abbot Gabriel, 39, a native of Appalachia who converted to Orthodoxy in 2007 and became a novice in 2011.

"The locals have become more and more comfortable with our presence" even if some may not enter the sanctuary, he said. "But gathering on a big porch for food and fellowship, that's different. That's what the locals do. That's mountain hospitality."

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Another year on the religion beat: The great Russell Shaw on secrecy in Catholic life

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Another year on the religion beat: The great Russell Shaw on secrecy in Catholic life

In the spring of 1972, Catholic bishops gathered in Atlanta for an historic event -- their first gathering under a policy that would allow journalists inside the doors of their meetings.

Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia, the conference president, promised to honor the policy approved by the bishops, which did allow many sensitive topics to be discussed during closed executive sessions.

"Cardinal Krol managed to get his own back, after his own fashion," wrote journalist Russell Shaw, in his book "Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church." He served, with different titles, as press aide for the bishops from 1969-1987 and wrote more than 20 books and thousands of articles for Catholic and mainstream publications.

"At the start of the meeting, after the bishops had prayed and taken care of preliminaries, the cardinal rose to speak. He spoke rapidly and at length -- in Latin! Nervous coughing and shuffling of papers could be heard from the press section."

Eventually the cardinal faced the journalists, with what Shaw called a "wicked grin." Krol quipped: "We told you we'd let you in. We didn't tell you what language we'd speak."

Krol was a conservative, but progressives have used similar tactics. I once asked Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, after tense debates about the morality of nuclear weapons, if several bishops -- by switching to Latin at key moments -- had "launched a preemptive strike" on newspaper headline writers. He smiled and said, "Yes."

This past week marked the start of my 38th year writing this "On Religion" column, and I spent 20 years leading GetReligion.org, a website that critiqued mainstream coverage of religion news. Over the decades, I had many encounters with Shaw and his January death, at age 90, reminded me that choices made by powerful clergy, as well as newsroom managers, often determine what news makes it into print.

One story loomed over Shaw's career more than any other -- decades of hidden and then public scandals about the sexual abuse of children, teens and adults by Catholic clergy.