Marginal Christianity

By Andrew J. Bacevich / TomDispatch My earliest recollection of national politics dates back exactly 60 years to the moment, in the summer of 1956, when I watched the political conventions in the company of that wondrous new addition to our family, television.  My parents were supporting President Dwight D. Eisenhower for a second term and that was good enough for me.  Even as a youngster, I sensed that Ike, the former supreme commander of allied forces in Europe in World War II, was someone of real stature.  In a troubled time, he exuded authority and self-confidence.  By comparison, Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson came across as vaguely suspect.  Next to the five-star incumbent, he seemed soft, even foppish, and therefore not up to the job.  So at least it appeared to a nine-year-old living in Chicagoland. Of the seamy underside of politics I knew nothing, of course.  On the surface, all seemed reassuring.  As if by divine mandate...

February 06, 2015 3:38 PM ET     Alva Noë NBC News anchor Brian Williams with his daughter, actress Allison Williams, and his wife Jane Williams at HBO's "Girls" fourth season premiere party in New York. Evan Agostini/AP                      A lot of folks are trying to make sense of what would drive Brian Williams, a reporter, the face of NBC news, to make up easily fact-checkable stories about his experiences as a reporter embedded with troops during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. His apology has only made things worse . He says he made a "mistake ." But it just isn't plausible that a mistake of memory could have led him to believe that he'd been in a helicopter shot down over enemy territory. No, he lied about it. The question is, why? Ego? Self-aggrandizement? Trying to make h...

The Holy Eucharist is supposed to be boring. So claims the Catholic theologian James Alison . He says, “When people tell me that they find Mass boring, I want to say to them: it’s supposed to be boring, or at least seriously underwhelming. It’s a long term education in becoming un-excited.” He’s right, I think. Let me explain. Alison’s claim about the Mass being boring or unexciting comes in the course of his contrasting false worship with True Worship. Alison has a broad understanding about what counts as worship. In a manner similar to James K.A. Smith’s arguments about liturgy, Alison finds instances of worship in many cultural practices: “football matches, celebrity cults, raves, initiation hazings, newspaper sales techniques and so on,” pretty much any cultural practice that involves the formation of a group of people. For Alison, all these forms of worship are part of the warp and woof of the violence of this devastated world. So, while Christian worship is analogicall...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/jun/28/pathological-fear-boredom-fear-ourselves Giles Fraser The Sunday morning hour, like the therapeutic hour, is a place to contemplate our capacity to deal with the fear of emptiness I like Rev Kate Bottley. And her disco-dancing flash mob video that topped the BBC's most-viewed clips earlier this week was enormous fun. As the happy couple finished their vows, the vicar, and prepared members of the congregation, broke into an exuberant choreographed routine to C+C Music Factory's, Everybody Dance Now, then Kool and the Gang's Celebration. Two elderly members of the congregation walked out. But most people loved it. But I don't think is that liturgy-as-entertainment is an appropriate antidote to the common complaint that church is boring. Actually, I don't think there is anything much wrong with a bit of boring now and again. No, I will go further. I think the experience of boring is good...