If you ever feel like spirituality  (the lived experience of faith) and theology (the study or knowledge of God, especially as articulated by scholars and intellectuals) inhabit two entirely separate worlds, you might be interested in an upcoming conference.

The Episcopal School for Ministry and the Diocese of Missouri will hold the third annual Making Disciples conference on Saturday, September 13, at Christ Church Cathedral. The conference will feature the Rev. Mark A. McIntosh, Ph.D., on the theme of “Discerning God’s Delight: A Theological Life of Spiritual Discernment.” More information, including registration details, fees, and deadlines, is available on the Dicoese’s website.

The Rev. Dr. McIntosh is an Episcopal priest, scholar, and a longtime theology professor at Loyola University. His numerous books and articles include Christology from Within and Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. As that subtitle indicates,bringing the spheres of spirituality and theology back into contact with one…

An Opinion page piece called “Labor Day: A Lost Decade” highlights the hardships that have hit working class and middle class Americans in recent years. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knows that economic injustice in this country is real and growing. We are not “a nation of whiners,” but many of us are working harder for less money and fewer benefits, and the constant insecurity of knowing that we are one or two lost paychecks away from financial ruin wreaks havoc with our spirits.

One paragraph really hit home. It reads, in part,

The fact is, Americans work hard, devoting a greater percentage of their time to working than people in any other advanced industrial nation. In a typical year, Americans work the equivalent of a week more than the Japanese, three weeks more than the British, six weeks more than the French, and nine weeks…

This blog has gotten a little heavy recently, especially on the politics front, so thought I’d lighten it up with a snippet from that other great American obsession: health news.

We’ve probably all read stories about how people who attend religious services regularly are healthier than those who don’t, and of course there are multiple studies out there suggesting that praying and being prayed for are good for your physical well-being.

Well, here’s a new twist on why you might be saving more than your soul if you attend church regularly. According to an article on the LiveScience website,

Medieval stained-glass windows colored in gold nanoparticles help purify air when lit by the sun, a new study finds.

Okay, granted, most of us here in St. Louis don’t worship in medieval cathedrals. Still, apparently it’s possible to reproduce this effect with modern materials, and supposedly it’s friendlier to the environment than…

What is your earliest memory?

A retreat leader once told me that if I dug back into my earliest memories I might be able to uncover the source for at least some of my images of God. The theory is that most of us form an idea or image of God at a very young age, regardless of our exposure to formal religious instruction or lack thereof, and often those early images remain embedded in our psyches. While most of us develop more intellectually sophisticated ideas about God as we age, and some of us even mature in our relationships to God, nonetheless those early images continue to shape both our theology (the ideas) and our spirituality (the relationship).

Test it out and see what you think. The very earliest memory I can recover is one of being comforted: I was sitting on my mother’s lap in a favorite rocking chair.…

I have a small confession to make: I went to see Mamma Mia! last week. Twice.

The film has received deservedly mixed reviews, yet I found myself sucked in by it, almost in spite of myself. The sheer goofy joie de vivre of the “Dancing Queen” scene alone is worth the price of admission. (There’s a hilarious entry here about what how this movie is so bad that it makes the writer want to claw his eyes out. I include it as fair warning for those who might be tempted to run out & see the film after reading this blog. No, I won’t give you your money back if you hate it.)

So what could such a pop culture cream puff of a film have to do with religion? I hope you’ll bear with me, and maybe take my enthusiasm with a grain of salt. From my perspective, the message of the…

The Irish Times is reporting that “a conciliatory statement is expected at the end of the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury,”which concludes today. Others are predicting that the whole endeavor will have been a waste or even a sham, a kind of desperate stall for time. The British paper the Telegraph has a particularly depressing article out today, found here, about bishops pressuring “the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare a split in the Anglican Communion for the sake of orthodox Christianity.”

For my own part, I am sure only that it will take time, perhaps a very long time, to understand with any clarity the actual results of the Lambeth Conference. It is almost unAmerican to spend two weeks following an event and not have some definite sense of resolution or closure when it is over. Who won? Who lost? What was the score? Can we give it “two thumbs up”? Our…

We’re falling apart at the seams. That would be the general impression I get of the Anglican Communion in most media reports of the last several years.

Not that I’m blaming the media, mind you. The conflicts within the Anglican Communion are real, painful, and profound. And of course priests and bishops and lay people who are all storming around and slamming doors behind them like one big dysfunctional family make good press. So be it.

The war drums (or death knells, depending upon whom you read) seemed to get louder and louder in the weeks leading up to the Lambeth Conference. Lambeth is a once-a-decade gathering of Anglican leaders (archbishops, bishops, and presiding bishops from around the globe), and the conference received oodles of press attention from the moment it was announced. The stories that streamed forth about the fractious, potentially schismatic state of the third largest Christian group in…

“How can you pray for someone you don’t know?”

The question was asked candidly, without rancor, and with genuine interest. The person asking the question was seriously ill and I was the chaplain assigned to the floor of the hospital where she was being treated. I had not even offered prayer; I had simply introduced myself and explained that I was a chaplain. Her question brought me up short.

The recent Pew religion poll found that more than half of all Americans report praying regularly. The number is impressive, but it leaves me wanting to know so much more. I wonder what and for whom people pray, what they even mean by prayer, what they understand to be happening when they pray, how it feels to them. Religion in America is a little like sex: media portrayals of other people’s spiritual practices can seem calculated to shock or offend (preachers damning our…

Today I learned a lesson about reading the fine print. I turned on Channel 9 at 9 o’clock, all excited to watch Traces of the Trade (the documentary on the largest slave-trading family in United States history, which I wrote about in in an earlier post). Instead, KETC was airing a really cool Frontline episode called “Jesus in China.” Not a waste of time, by any means, but not what I was expecting.

First, let me apologize if I led anyone else into this same frustrating cul-de-sac (I don’t want to call it a dead end, since the Frontline program was great). I did a bit of digging and learned that “Traces of the Trade” is only airing on KETC HD, not on the regular KETC (Channel 9). According to the PBS website, a DVD version of the documentary will be available for purchase soon. It also appears to be available now…