Vampire book author Anne Rice is fed up with organized religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. She announced on her website and on Twitter Wednesday:

Anne Rice …I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life…

Thursday, she seemed to backtrack a bit, posting on Twitter:

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn’t understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

So here’s a question. Can one logically say: “My faith in Christ is central to my life — but I am not a Christian?” Or, turning the question on its head, can one logically say: “I am a Christian, but my faith in Christ is irrelevant to my life”?

This is from Wittenburg Door and it’s pretty funny.

The Episcopal News Service just moved a story titled

Standing Committee members celebrate commitment to transparency

It’s a story about a five-day long, closed-door meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion which met in London.

When they weren’t celebrating their commitment to transparency, members of the Standing Committee held an election to fill an open seat. Last time I checked, the committee had not revealed the name of the person who was elected or the vote totals. The winner’s name will be revealed when and if he accepts the post, it was explained.

You won’t find many independent news accounts about the Standing Committee members celebrating their commitment to transparency during their five-day-long meeting in London because the meeting was closed to the public and to the press.

Many of the more theologically conservative voices on The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion have resigned. But there must be at least one of them left. And he thinks it’s time for the Anglican Communion to separate itself from the Anglican Church’s official U.S. branch.

Dato’ Stanley Isaacs, an attorney from Malaysia, represents the Province of South East Asia and a member of the Standing Committee. On Monday, July 26, he made a motion for the Episcopal Church to be removed from the Anglican Communion.

It was probably an interesting discussion, since the Standing Committee includes Episcopal Church presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. I say probably because the standing committee meeting was closed to the public and to the press.

Mr. Isaacs’ motion failed, the Anglican Communion News Service reports.

I just got the latest issue of Free Inquiry, which is published by the Council for Secular Humanism. The most interesting item is on page 10 and its headline reads:

We Need Your Immediate Help to Close an Extraordinary Budget Gap!

Apparently, the Council has relied heavily on a wealthy and generous donor whose $800,000 annual contribution provided roughly 25 percent of the revenue for the Council, the Center for Inquiry and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

This year, however, the donor decided to withhold his annual gift, and now the organization is “forced to cut down to the bone”, laying off employees and closing its offices in Tampa and Washington, D.C.

The second most interesting item is on page 6 and is headlined:

Free Inquiry Founder, Editor in Chief Paul Kurtz Resigns

There may be some linkage between Kurtz’s resignation and the donor’s decision to withhold funds. But that’s not clear. The organization has posted a fascinating Frequently Asked Questions sheet here.

Two TV preachers who have been the focus of U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley’s televangelism inquiry were photographed together in Rome, holding hands as they walked through the eternal city.

One, Benny Hinn, is undergoing a divorce from his wife. The other, Paula White, recently divorced her husband.

The picture and a write up is in the latest issue of the National Enquirer.

White and Hinn have admitted that they met up in Rome. But they say they were both there, coincidentally, on business, and that nothing inappropriate happened.

Both preachers have issued statements with remarkably similar wording.

Hinn’s statement is titled:

Pastor Benny Responds to False and Misleading News Reports

White’s statement is titled:

PASTOR PAULA RESPONDS TO FALSE AND MISLEADING ARTICLE

An unbaptized dog, to make matters worse. To read more about this open and inclusive parish, click here.

There’s been a lot in the media this week about Shirley Sherrod, the Georgia USDA official who was fired due to a snippet of a speech she gave in which she admitted failing to give whole-hearted support to a farmer because he was white.

(The complete speech ishere.)

The clip didn’t mention that the incident had happened 24 years ago before Sherrod became a government employee and it omitted her subsequent epiphany about race. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution put it:

” Sherrod said the short video clip excluded the breadth of the story about how she eventually worked with the man over a two-year period to help ward off foreclosure of his farm, and how she eventually became friends with him and his wife.

‘And I went on to work with many more white farmers,’ she said. ‘The story helped me realize that race is not the issue, it’s about the people who have and the people who don’t. When I speak to groups, I try to speak about getting beyond the issue of race.’”

It struck me, as I watched this all unfold, that Sherrod was using a standard tool of the church — a testimony.

We see these in hymns:

I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind, but now I see.

We see them in Scriptures:

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. [from 1 Corinthians 6]

We hear them in church (some churches anyway) on Sundays.

And we see them in the newspapers and on television (every diet commercial ever created uses the “before and after” approach).

A testimony is an inspirational device but it only works if it includes the before and after imagery. By slicing and dicing Shirley Sherrod’s words, somebody irresponsible built a soundbite, but tore down a testimony. And what remained was a warped, wobbly version of the original.

That reality is why observers on the left and the right have called on the White House to reinstate her.

It’s a fascinating list.

There are a couple of southerners. Rabbi Myrna Matsa relocated to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina and has been a trauma counselor ever since, working in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Mississippi.

Another southerner: Alysa Stanton, a North Carolinian who converted from Pentecostal Christianity to Reform Judaism. Stanton is the first African American female rabbi.

It’s quite a list with a lot of interesting women highlighted. I’d love to see a similar list of the top 50 women pastors and/or Christian religious leaders, if such a list has been compiled.

Artur Suleimanov, a convert from Islam, had been threatened repeatedly in the past, Barnabas Fund reports.

He rebuilt the New York Yankees franchise and had a penchant for firing people. But he also donated millions to charity and gave second (and third and fourth) chances to those he had made walk the plank.

“I’m really 95 percent Mr. Rogers and only 5 percent Oscar the Grouch,” George Steinbrenner once said.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Steinbrenner in Orlando, Florida when I was 16 years old and he posed for pictures with me. Twice. I was wearing a Yankees shirt with a light jacket on top and — in all the excitement — I forgot to take the jacket off. Later, I realized my mistake and asked if I could get one more picture with the Yankees shirt visible. He was gracious and gregarious and made me feel like I was king of the world. It’s sad to see him go.

Thank You (Lord for all You\'ve Done for Me) One of gospel music’s greatest voices has been silenced. Walter Hawkins died Sunday of pancreatic cancer. He was 61. His recording of “Oh Happy Day” made him famous nearly four decades ago; but my favorite is“Thank You.”

Robert Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral, has handed over the pulpit to his daughter. But things are not well in Garden Grove, California.
Giving has plummeted, tens of millions of dollars in debt have not been repaid and despite lots of Possibility Thinking, the congregation is apparently struggling.

I’ve posted the Associated Press story below, but the Orange County Register has really in-depth coverage.

Also, the Crystal Cathedral has released a statement clarifying Robert Schuller’s new status. It is posted below.
(more…)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Leaders of the Presbyterian church have voted to allow non-celibate gays in committed relationships to serve as clergy.

Thursday’s vote isn’t a final stamp of approval for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or its more than 2 million members. But it’s a step that could make the church one of the most gay-friendly major Christian denominations in the country.

Delegates voted during the church’s general assembly in Minneapolis, with 53 percent approving the more liberal policy. A separate vote is expected later Thursday on whether to change the church’s definition of marriage from between “a man and a woman” to between “two people.”

But such changes would take effect only if approved by a majority of the church’s 173 regional presbyteries.

The mainline Presbyterian Church had 4.16 million followers in the mid-1960s. Today, it has half that amount — 2.08 million adherents.

Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier-Journal chronicles the collapse of one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.