Skeptical Faith

 Google Image I’ve written before in this blog about the “spiritual-but-not-religious” phenomenon. Many who profess this preference are among the “nones,” who write or say “none” when asked in surveys to name their religious affiliation. Here are some data on the “nones,” according to a 2013 report of the Pew Research Center. ·        One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. ·        The third of adults under 30 who have no religious affiliation (32%) compares with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives. ·        Mainstream Protestants have declined the most. The Catholic share of the population has been roughly steady, in part because of...

Google Image You’ve drawn so close that it’s hard to see you. And you speak so softly that it’s hard to hear you. And I guess that’s what I get for inviting you in. Because you took me at my word, and now I know that Faith is not a fire as much as it’s a glow. A quiet, lovely burning underneath the snow. And it’s not too much – it’s just enough to get me home. Cause love moves slow – Love moves slow. This is the chorus of “Slow,” a song written and performed by Audrey Assad, whom I’ve mentioned before in this blog. You can hear her sing it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OZp2UezV54 . I’ve started with Assad’s lyrics because like many of her songs, it moves me. And the point of this post is to encourage people who seek God to nourish their souls emotionally as well as intellectually. First, a word about the term “soul.” Using it violates one of the norms I’ve used in this blog: to avoid “churchy” terms. “Soul,” like “heart,” however, has taken on a secular mean...

Pope Francis kisses a disabled man Google Image Diego Neria was born a girl in Spain, but after a sex-change operation eight years ago, he’s now a man. Neria was raised a devout Catholic but many people in his parish scorned him after the operation, according to CNN News. After heated discussions with a parish priest and some others in his hometown of Plasencia, he started staying away from Mass. "I've never lost faith, ever," Neria says. "But the other thing is the rejection." So, with the help of his bishop, he wrote to Pope Francis last year and, says Neria, Francis telephoned him twice. Then came a visit with the pope on Jan. 24 at the papal residence. The Vatican and the bishop have declined comment. "This man loves the whole world," Neria says of Pope Francis. "I think there's not, in his head, in his way of thinking, discrimination against anyone. I'm speaking about him, not the institution. …But if this Pope has a ...

  Google Image Name this important person in history: He was raised in an obscure village of 200 to 400 inhabitants. He and his family were at the bottom of the social classes, even below that of the peasantry. The house he grew up in was made of stones roughly stacked on top of one another. The floor was of packed earth; the roof was thatched, built over beams of wood and held together with mud. Two or three of these shacks were clustered together around an open courtyard where much of the cooking was done. There was a common cistern and a millstone for grinding grain. Garbage and sewage was tossed outside the house into alleyways between the groups of houses. Conditions were filthy, malodorous and unhealthy. He and most residents had iron and protein deficiencies, and most had severe arthritis. Life expectancy was somewhere in the 30s. Some of you may have guessed that this describes Jesus and, according to archaeologists, the circumstances in which he lived. Odd, ...