Emergent church leader Rob Bell couldn’t ask for better publicity on his upcoming book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  As Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), William P. Young (The Shack) and Rhonda Byrne (The Secret) can attest, the surest w/… Read full post »

“The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) began providing public access to the Starr report on Friday, September 11, 1998, following the enactment of U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 525 authorizing public disclosure.”

--U.S. GPO news release

The book “Freakonomics,&… Read full post »

While my Facebook friends celebrate their children’s college graduations I’m reminded of a small controversy surrounding my stepdaughter’s graduation speaker.  Darcy attended Scripps College in Claremont, a nice older suburb east of Los Angeles.  Scripps is one college in… Read full post »

You wouldn't trust a climatologist to test you for colon cancer.  You wouldn't trust an oncologist to design a highway overpass.  So, why would you trust a civil engineer to tell you whether or not global warming exists?

After reading a recent letter in my local newspape… Read full post »

I’ve been following a program to read through the entire Bible in a year.  While I’ve read the Bible before, it seems I keep finding newer and more bizarre things all the time.  Leviticus is ripe for weirdness.  I realize most of those laws wer… Read full post »

The other day a Facebook friend posted a link to a video called “Nativity Dance” made at Highland Park Presbyterian Church to the tune of Chris Brown’s “Forever.”  The video looked and sounded familiar, probably because it’s a copycat of… Read full post »

I didn’t grow up in a church-going family.  I went off-and-on with my mom for a few years when I was young to St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Boulder, the same church later attended by JonBenet Ramsey.  I have a memory of Father Jim meeting my mother and I at… Read full post »

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” -- John 14:6

In her book, Shrub, the late Molly Ivins relates a story in which Barbara Bush disputes her son George W. Bush’s claim that all the people who/… Read full post »

The latest news is that former New Life Church megachurch minister Ted Haggard is starting a prayer group.  I wonder what he'll pray for.  I hope he considers praying for the folks on Wall Street to find their moral compass and maybe lay off the gays for awhile.

My personal belief… Read full post »

A boyfriend in college used to regularly insist, “Christianity is nothing but dogma.”  While this wasn’t exactly a startling observation coming from a Jew educated in Catholic parochial schools, it has served as a reminder over the years that religious concepts insiders… Read full post »

I renewed my family health club membership yesterday.  It’s a charter membership, which means we pay about half the rate of normal monthly memberships, but we take a greater risk by paying up front for the next two years.  From a business perspective, it’s a clever idea:  t… Read full post »

"Cultural influences also appeared weak.  Only a quarter [of school shooters] were interested in violent movies, half that number in video games--probably below average for teen boys."

--Columbine,  Dave Cullen

I finished reading Columbine last night, the book by Denver journalist/… Read full post »

In one of his radio programs, Ronald Reagan gave a modern-day retelling of the Little Red Hen, made to portray the other farm animals as socialists waiting for a handout.

The Little Red Hen was a portrayal of the Protestant work ethic, based on St. Paul's directive that if a man… Read full post »

Occasionally I’ve wondered, if a liberal prayed fervently for her political ideology to prevail, and a conservative prayed just as fervently that her political ideology would prevail, which prayer would be answered?  Would God throw up his hands and call it a wash?  Does he even bothe… Read full post »

A few years ago I remarked on a necklace a woman in my Bible study was wearing:  a Star of David with an embedded cross.  I confess I’m fascinated by symbolism, in a way that I’m not fascinated by slogans.  I can be totally distracted when I come up behind a… Read full post »

The full cost of grandma’s total knee replacement is $35,000, according to Cost Helper.  Of that, all but $4,257 is paid for by American taxpayers through Medicare.  Nevertheless, a recent study by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Boston University School of Publ/… Read full post »

“The strategy is as it was in 1993 and '94, to ... demean and scare people about a government-run plan, try to make people not even remember that Medicare, their Medicare program, is a government-run plan that has operated a lot more efficiently.

“And also, the people who are enrolled in… Read full post »

I had an experience a number of years ago with Blue Cross Blue Shield where they refused to cover a claim because I had another insurance policy that should cover it first. Baffled, I called and asked what this other insurance was.  The woman on the phone said she couldn't reveal… Read full post »

I'm not sure what the Atlantic Monthly's fascination is with conservative editors.  Maybe they hoped to replace Michael Kelly, who was killed during the Iraq War.  But Kelly was at least witty, while Ross Douthat's recent Op-Ed on Dan Brown in the New York Times makes him look lik… Read full post »

Much has been made about the support of regular church attenders for torture, shown in a recent survey conducted by Pew Research.  A more alarming statistic shows the effect of age on support for torture.  The same study found that a third of respondents over the age of 65 said torture… Read full post »

I grew up in Boulder, Colorado where I learned from the Dooby Brothers that Jesus was my friend.  Because I was born again on Valentine’s Day, I saw Christ as not just a friend, but a lover.

Then I went to college where I attended Navigators, an evangelical… Read full post »

Many years ago, someone at my church spoke during the service to recruit volunteers for a life chain.  I’ve never been too passionate about the pro-life movement:  my mother had a neighbor who died in an illegal back alley abortion back in the 1930s or ’40s.  I don’t… Read full post »

One Sunday morning, the minister in my non-denominational evangelical church interrupted his sermon to reprimand his teenage daughter for some behavior I wasn’t even aware of.  While it’s human nature for a father to occasionally embarrass his teenage daughter, usually, it’s un… Read full post »

Thirty years ago my Baptist boyfriend told me I should avoid the charismatic movement.  The reason: charismatic churches were comprised of 60 percent women, a statistic he’d been given by the director of our campus evangelical group.   

Ultimately, I ignored this advice, a… Read full post »