Others that hinder the message

 

The Lord is my Good Shepherd (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Those who are willing to read God’s word for themselves – and keep reading so that they get its full flavour and meaning – are conscious of the amazing message that becomes clearer the more they read. But sadly there are others that hinder the message – Jesus says, “He who is a hired hand, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees and the wolf snatches them and scatters them” (John 10:12). But scattered sheep can listen and, even today, hear “the good shepherd” by reading his words and those of his disciples and other of God’s prophets. If they feed on them every day they find the only true pasture in the wilderness of this world – and will come into the promised land.

Related articles

• Christ, the Good Shepherd (saintbarbarablog.wordpress.com)
  Shrek, a Merino male sheep in New Zealand, gained some fame back in 2004 for eluding capture and sheering for 6 years. He was finally caught on April 15, 2004 (no, the IRS was not involved) and shorn of the 60 lbs of wool he had accumulated (enough to make suits for 20 men). He was carrying around 5 to 6 times the regular weight of his fleece, simply because he was avoiding his shepherd.
  +
  How long do you think it will take Christ to free you of your burdens? Christ, the Good Shepherd is calling you, and He is leading the way to green pastures. He does not walk behind, driving the flock like a herd of cattle. Rather, he walks in front, and those who hear His voice follow Him. Will you follow?
• All Prophets were Shepherds (Hadith No. 1958) (ilookilisten.wordpress.com)
  All prophets shepherded sheep at some point in their lives. It was important for their training. Some of them are mentioned here.
• The one about the good shepherd (drewdowns.net)
  few of us really know anything about sheep herding. It really is not an image that is for us. Shepherds aren’t our thing. The image of Jesus as a shepherd, in some ways is fossilized. Cast in stone. Or set in stained-glass. Throughout all of the gospels Jesus speaks again and again about being a shepherd. And when he does, he is all kinds of different types of shepherds. He is all over the place. He has different values and a different purpose with his flock. It is hard to get a bead on where he is going with it.
  
• Of Sheep and Shepherds (revnigelcarter.wordpress.com)
  In many places today sheep are herded by being driven from behind, often with the help of sheep dogs and farm vehicles. It’s a benign practice but it conjures up completely the wrong image of Jesus as the good shepherd.
  Instead, picture the shepherd as the one who spends a lot of time in the fields with his sheep, looking out for their needs, tending to the injured ones, protecting them from wolves and other predators, even at the risk of his own life.
  The sheep come to know their shepherd and, crucially, will follow him as he leads them to fresh pastures. They don’t need to be “driven” into the safety of the sheep pen. They will follow the shepherd they trust.
  This is the word-picture of the ancient shepherd which Jesus is painting.
  
• Christ Our Sheperd (crowleyfirstumc.wordpress.com)
  The Bible often compares us to sheep.  Like sheep, we may go astray by following someone who is not our shepherd.  Like sheep, we are easily frightened when venturing into unfamiliar territory.  Like sheep, we need a shepherd to guide us, to protect us, to lead us to clean water and green pastures.
  Christ is our shepherd.  He does not walk away from us, leaving us bewildered and forlorn.  He does not wait for us to come to him, but comes to us and teaches us his ways: kindness, compassion, and courage in the face of opposition and adversity.  Listening to Jesus, we find our way.
  
• Gospel Reading John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople The Gospel of John 10:9-16 (orthodoxlogos5.wordpress.com)
  The Lord said, “I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
• John 10:11 NKJV - He gave His life for me (pagprayer.wordpress.com)
  Jesus as our shepherd did more than risk His life, He gave His life, enduring death on behalf of sinners.  Jesus’ total giving of Himself is shown supremely in His obedient suffering and death on the cross. This act of giving continues to motivate and inspire Christians today.
  +
  Jesus continues to pursue those who are lost as a shepherd for his sheep. Stop for a moment and listen. Jesus is calling your name. He wants to return you to the flock where He can love and care for you. God’s desire has never changed. He desires to spend eternity with you.

Christianity to be enshrined

In a letter to The Telegraph, eight leading thinkers including Prof Roger Scruton, the philosopher and writer, insist that the moderate brand of Christianity “enshrined” in the British constitution actively protects those of other faiths and none.

The letter was published as Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is himself an atheist, said it was “flamingly obvious” that Britain is founded on Christian values.

David Robertson in the course of a 90 second talk had used the words "Britain's Christian traditions". It was enough to get him excluded by a particular member of the BBC's thought police. One wonders if the Prime Minister, David Cameron will be allowed to say his latest remarks on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Many object to the British Prime Minister his characterisation of Britain as a “Christian country” and the negative consequences for politics and society that this engenders.

"In his call for more evangelism, Mr Cameron is exclusively tying himself to one faith group, inevitably to the exclusion of others," opined Elizabeth O'Casey, Policy and Research Office at the National Secular Society. She also warned the British people that we are moving away from the concept of all of us being "rights-bearing citizens first and foremost, with democratic autonomy and equality, regardless of which faith they happen to have, or not have".

At a social level, Britain has been shaped like many other European countries for the better by many pre-Christian, non-Christian, and post-Christian forces. They are a plural society with citizens with a range of perspectives. To call it religious is taking the religious element out of proportion. I do know many call Belgium also a Catholic country, but if you would question the citicens about their beliefs, wou would get a total different opinion. They mix Catholic and Christian as if it is the same, because they do not know the diffenrence and most of them do not know what Catholicisim enhales.

Most citicens donot want to recognise they have gone far away form religion and certainly far away for m the reall Christian and Jewish values.

The inhabitants of the West European countries should come to realize that they are a largely non-religious society.

I would agree with more than 55 signatories:

Constantly to claim otherwise fosters alienation and division in our society. Although it is right to recognise the contribution made by many Christians to social action, it is wrong to try to exceptionalise their contribution when it is equalled by British people of different beliefs. This needlessly fuels enervating sectarian debates that are by and large absent from the lives of most British people, who do not want religions or religious identities to be actively prioritised by their elected government.

Gavin Littaur reacts also:

David Cameron should be more careful when pontificating about Christianity, given that he does not speak for those (such as myself, a Jew), who are not necessarily of his faith and beliefs.

The Prime Minister’s urging of Britons to be “more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there” is particularly unfortunate. It is at best tactless and at worst an exemplification of the zealous proselytising of extremists.

The commentator finds the letter against David Cameron just the latest expression of an infantile multi-culturalism that has done terrible damage to social cohesion precisely because it is too weak to create any substantial bonds of identity.

The Church of England is the established church and the Queen is the head of it for reasons which are deeply bound up with the country's political, religious and cultural inheritance.

Neither does the fact that most people don't nowadays go to church on a Sunday mean that Christian values and symbols do not play a vital role in national life. Whenever there's a national tragedy -- the death of Diana for example -- watch how quickly Christianity moves back into centre stage.

says The commentator.

As in Belgium the Catholic church may be the main church, the Church of England is the established church in England, but that does not mean that most British citizens would adhere to that church or believe in the God of that church.
It is not because when we go from place to place, where we may find everywhere in any town or village across the country a local church, that we may find religious people coming to that church aor that it is functional or not. It tells more about the past than about the present. In most countries those village churches are most of the time empty buildings.

More than anything else the church buildings may define the local landscape and the visual community of which we are all a part, but that does not tell us that they and we are from the same religious community, nor believing in the same things.

Read more about this story in:

Christian Britain? Make way for the thought police

Atheists should show 'liberal tolerance' to Britain's status as a Christian country

Britain accommodates people of all faiths because Christianity encourages society to be tolerant

Cameron's Christianity in a multi-culti Britain

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Related articles

• Britain no longer a Christian country admits Archbishop
• More Than 50 British Intellectuals Say to Prime Minister David Cameron: "Britain is Not a 'Christian Country'"
• Poll: Britain IS a Christian Country - Just Not a Very Religious One
• Welby rounds on critics of Cameron's Christian Britain'
• PM right on Christianity, says Welby
• Eight arguments about whether the UK is a Christian country
• David Cameron is right, Britain is a Christian country, says Archbishop of Canterbury
• Philosophers wonder whether secularists can offer better alternative to Christian Britain
• Break Church and State link, says Clegg
• It's arrogant secularists rather than David Cameron who are fostering division

Problems attracting and maintaining worshippers

 The urgency to reach people with the Gospel can,
if the church is not faithful and watchful,
tempt us to subvert the Gospel by redefining its terms.

 We are not honest if we do not admit that the current cultural context
raises the cost of declaring the Gospel on its own terms.

 

Jim Hinch writes:

The exteriors of Crystal Cathedral. Garden Grove, CA, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just 10 years ago, evangelical Christianity appeared to be America’s dominant religious movement. Evangelicals, more theologically diverse and open to the secular world than their fundamentalist brethren, with whom they’re often confused, were on the march toward political power and cultural prominence. They had the largest churches, the most money, influential government lobbyists, and in the person of President George W. Bush, leadership of the free world itself. Indeed, even today most people continue to regard the United States as the great spiritual exception among developed nations: a country where advances in science and technology coexist with stubborn, and stubbornly conservative, religiosity. But the reality, largely unnoticed outside church circles, is that evangelicalism is not only in gradual decline but today stands poised at the edge of a demographic and cultural cliff.

The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals. (It should be noted that surveying Americans’ faith lives is notoriously difficult, since answers vary according to how questions are phrased, and respondents often exaggerate their level of religious commitment. Pew is a nonpartisan research organization with a track record of producing reliable, in-depth studies of religion. Other equally respected surveys—Gallup, the General Social Survey—have reached conclusions about Christianity’s status in present-day America that agree with Pew’s in some respects and diverge in others.)

Secularization alone is not to blame for this change in American religiosity. Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as Schuller once rode to success.

California's Crystal Cathedral, now Christ Cathedral (Photo by Wikipedia user Nepenthes)

Continue reading: Where Are the People? -
Evangelical Christianity in America is losing its power—what happened to Orange County’s Crystal Cathedral shows why

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Related articles

• David Cameron says Christians should be 'more evangelical' (telegraph.co.uk)
  
  In his strongest intervention on religion to date, Mr Cameron said that in an increasingly "secular age" Christians need to be even "more confident" and "ambitious".
  He said that he has personally felt the "healing power" of the Church of England's pastoral care and highlighted its role in "improving our society and the education of our children".
• Cameron does God, but does Britain want him to? (newstatesman.com)
  At an Easter reception at Downing Street, he declared: "Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago" and spoke of him as "our saviour". He followed this up with a video message in which he said: "Easter is not just a time for Christians across our country to reflect, but a time for our whole country to reflect on what Christianity brings to Britain."
  +
  But while Cameron is now unequivocally "doing God" (almost certainly with an eye to those Conservatives alienated by his support for equal marriage), does Britain want him to? With apt timing, a new global study has found that little more than a third of people in Britain believe that religion has a positive role to play in our lives, compared to a global average of 59 per cent, while a quarter believe it has a negative impact.
  +
  As the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey showed, this is, increasingly, a secular country, not a Christian one. Forty eight per cent of respondents stated that they did not belong to a religion, up from 32 per cent in 1983, and just 20 per cent described themselves as belonging to the Church of England, down from 40 per cent in 1983.
  This ambiguity points to the need for a clear separation between church and state. Religious believers who oppose such a move should look to the US, where faith has flourished despite the country's secular constitution (spoken of by Jefferson as "a wall of separation) .
  
• Left Behind? (dish.andrewsullivan.com)
  Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as [televangelist Robert] Schuller once rode to success.
• Victim of the US's 'evangelical recession', California's Crystal Cathedral is now under Catholic control (freethinker.co.uk)
  The Crystal Cathedral – one of America’s largest and most celebrated ecclesiastical buildings – was replete with all the bells and whistles evangelicals in the US craved: livestock, silly costumes, lights, cameras, below-stage elevators, theatre-style seating, an indoor reflecting pool … and one mother of an organ, with 10,000 pipes.
  
  

  The cathedral’s enormous organ, pictured at a Yuletide past.
  But things have drastically changed. According to this fascinating American Scholar report by Jim Hinch, American evangelicals are outnumbered by people of no professed faith ­ –  and in June this year, Schuller’s evangelical Christian ministry, founded almost 60 years ago amid the suburbs of postwar Southern California, conducted its last worship service and filmed its last Hour of Power in the Crystal Cathedral.
  
  

  Robert H Schuller (Photo: Reuters).
  Hounded by creditors, the ministry declared bankruptcy in 2010. Last year Schuller resigned from the cathedral’s board, and the building was flogged for $58 million to Orange County’s Catholic diocese, which intends ripping out all the Disneyesque equipment and replacing it with the sort of crap Catholics regard as more palatable: a consecrated altar, bishop’s cathedra, baptismal font, and votive chapels dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe and other saints prominent in immigrant Catholics’ devotional lives. (There is a frightening number of immigrant Catlickers in the vicinity).
  The building is scheduled to reopen for Catholic worship in 2016.
  
• Whither the Prosperity Gospel? by Russell D. Moore (thewordonthewordoffaithinfoblog.com)
  A few months ago, the American Scholar published a cover story on the collapse of Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral. The article, by Jim Hinch, used the Cathedral as a parable for evangelicalism itself.
  +
  the question remains, where are all the people who once thronged the Crystal Cathedral. The Charlottesville correspondent explains to the American scholars: “They are at home, having their self-esteem puffed up by a new breed of prosperity-Gospel preacher, including Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and T.D. Jakes.” This is exactly right. The prosperity gospel isn’t just another brand of evangelicalism. It isn’t “evangelical” at all because it’s rooted in a different gospel from the one preached and embodied by Jesus Christ. The prosperity gospel is far more akin to the ancient Canaanite fertility religions than it is to anything announced by Jesus, the prophets before him, or the apostles after him.
  
• From Crystal to Christ: A Once and Future Cathedral (firstthings.com)
  Garden Grove Community Church began in 1955 when Schuller rented for $10 per week the Orange Drive-In Theater, a well-chosen site near the just-opened Disneyland. Drive-in theaters were the rave across the country then. “Come as you are in the family car” was an early Schuller slogan. Schuller preached from the tarpaper rooftop of the snack bar while his wife Arvella played a portable organ. And come they did, not only to what was billed as the nation’s first walk-in/drive-in church, but also to Schuller’s expansive television ministry called “The Hour of Power.” In his prime on “The Hour of Power,” Robert Schuller was spectacular. He appeared each Sunday in flowing robes, with a booming resonant voice and sweeping gestures, while surrounded by fountains that splashed at a button’s push and a thousand-voice choir that sang some of the best religious music on television. At its height, “The Hour of Power” was the most watched religious television program in the world, seen by an estimated 30 million people on hundreds of stations around the globe.
  
• Is The United States Religiously Diverse? (themoderatevoice.com)
  I think grouping all so called Christian religions in the United States is a false equivalency.  An evangelical Christian church and a main stream Christian church are not the same religion.  A Pentecostal church and the Lutheran church are not the same religion.  It also does not take into account social issues.  It has been my observation that many in the United States attend attend church for social rather than religious reasons.  It is part of being part of society.  As an atheist I have been guilty of this at times of emotional stress.  As someone who has lived in Europe I know that 63% of the French may be socially Christian but not religiously Christian. Grouping all so called Christian religions together is not unlike grouping all Abrahamic  (Jewish, Christian an Muslim) religions together.  Some religious scholars think we are all actually Zoroastrians, the first monotheistic religion.
  
• World Vision and Evangelicalism: An Interview with David King (pietistschoolman.com)
  Last week the U.S. chapter of the international Christian humanitarian organization World Vision made headlines: first when president Rich Stearns confirmed to Christianity Today last Monday that the organization would employ Christians in same-sex marriages, only to reverse the decision two days later, in the wake of torrents of criticism from conservatives, some of whom threatened to withdraw their financial support from World Vision and its well-known child sponsorship program. Yesterday a Google executive resigned from the board of World Vision U.S. in protest, and Rachel Held Evans likely spoke for many progressive evangelicals when she wrote, “The response to World Vision revealed some major fault lines in the Church, and many of us who grew up evangelical interpreted all the gleeful ‘farewelling’ from evangelical leaders as our final kick out the door.”

Is the Megachurch the New Liberalism?

Black Christian new writes:

The emergence of the megachurch as a model of metropolitan ministry is one of the defining marks of evangelical Christianity in the United States. Megachurches -- huge congregations that attract thousands of worshipers -- arrived on the scene in the 1970s and quickly became engines of ministry development and energy.

Over the last 40 years, the megachurch has made its presence known, often dominating the Christian landscape within the nation's metropolitan regions. The megachurch came into dominance at the same time that massive shopping malls became the landmarks of suburban consumer life. Sociologists can easily trace the rise of megachurches within the context of America's suburban explosion and the development of the technologies and transportation systems that made both the mall and the megachurch possible.

 

 Continue reading: Is the Megachurch the New Liberalism?

Related articles

• A Landmark Case Study of a Megachurch (msahlin.typepad.com)
  The patterns of a megachurch look much like those of its niche in the world; fragmented nodes of participation connected by the automobile and facilities much like shopping malls. The home and family have become the center of life and other institutions (work, community, politics and culture) are marginalized around the private center of each nuclear family's life.
  +
  Evangelical megachurches have become expert at providing many different modes of worship, each appealing to a specific subculture. They are dispersed, multi-modal networks that only appear to be mass organizations. They best fit the endless suburban-like social context of California which is replicated to some extent around all major metropolitan areas in North America.
• Is the Megachurch the New Liberalism? (standupforthetruth.com)
  On the international scene, huge congregations can be found in many African nations and in nations such as Brazil, South Korea, and Australia. In London, where the megachurch can trace its roots back in the 19th century to massive urban congregations such as Charles Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, a few modern megachurches can be found. For the most part, however, the suburban evangelical megachurch is an American phenomenon.
  

  Theologically, most megachurches are conservative in orientation, at least in a general sense. In America, a large number of megachurches are associated with the charismatic movement and denominations such as the Assemblies of God. Many are independent, though often loosely associated with other churches. The largest number of megachurches within one denomination is found within the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination.
  +
  A shot now reverberating around the evangelical world was fired by Atlanta megachurch pastor Andy Stanley in recent days. Preaching at North Point Community Church, in a sermon series known as “Christian,” Stanley preached a message titled “When Gracie Met Truthy” on April 15, 2012. With reference to John 1:14, Stanley described the challenge of affirming grace and truth in full measure. He spoke of grace and truth as a tension, warning that “if you resolve it, you give up something important.”

• The Big Business of the MegaChurch (jenx67.com)
  
• Has the Megachurch Idea Peaked? (msahlin.typepad.com)
  Two items in the news this weekend tell me that the megachurch concept has peaked in American culture. From here on out it will decline, but probably never disappear.
  First, the Crystal Cathedral, arguably the original megachurch, has passed to the ownership of the Roman Catholic diocese in Orange County (California) and has been renamed as a Catholic cathedral. The megachurch started by Robert Schuller is at an end after about a half century.
  Second, Pastor Creflo Dollar was arrested on Friday night for beating his 15-year-old daughter. He has been a primary example of the "prosperity gospel" and African American megachurches. He will inevitably go downhill from this event despite his denial and defiance on the events in question.
  This is probably as clear a marker as we will have on this trend in our culture. The idea of the megachurch will become less attractive and slowly enter into decline. But, it is unlikely to ever disappear alltogther. There will always be a strand of Christianity anchored in the culture of the affluent, suburban consumer even once the Baby Boom has passed from the world.
  
• God as a drug: The rise of American megachurches (esciencenews.com)
  American megachurches use stagecraft, sensory pageantry, charismatic leadership and an upbeat, unchallenging vision of Christianity to provide their congregants with a powerful emotional religious experience, according to research from the University of Washington. "Membership in megachurches is one of the leading ways American Christians worship these days, so, therefore, these churches should be understood," said James Wellman, associate professor of American religion at the University of Washington. "Our study shows that -- contrary to public opinion that tends to pass off the megachurch movement as consumerist religion -- megachurches are doing a pretty effective job for their members. In fact, megachurch members speak eloquently of their spiritual growth."
  +
  The researchers also found that the large size of megachurch congregations is a benefit rather than a drawback, as it results in resources for state-of-the-art technology -- amplifying the emotional intensity of services -- and the ability to hire more qualified church leadership.
• What in the world??? (nomads2.wordpress.com)
  The emergence of the megachurch was noted by sociologists and church researchers attempting to understand the massive shifts that were taking place in the last decades of the 20th century. Researchers such as Dean M. Kelley of the National Council of Churches traced the decline of the liberal denominations that once constituted the old Protestant “mainline.” This decline was contrasted with remarkable growth among more conservative denominations and churches — a pattern traced in Kelley’s 1973 landmark book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing. Kelley argued that conservative churches were growing precisely because of their strict doctrine and moral teachings. The early megachurches were the leading edge of the growth among conservative churches, especially in metropolitan and suburban settings.
  The megachurches were not without their critics. Theologian David Wells leveled a massive critique of the doctrinal minimalism, methodological pragmatism, and managerial culture of many megachurches. Os Guiness accused the megachurch movement of “flirting with modernity” to a degree that put the Christian identity of the massive congregations at risk.
  
• Has the Megachurch Lost Its Luster? (juicyecumenism.com)
  Churches with multi-site campuses, parking garages, jumbo-trons, award-winning praise bands, laser shows, tremendous charities, political endorsements, and even in-house coffee shops sprang up across the nation. Thousands of people—unchurched, disenchanted, or pushed out of liberalizing Mainline congregations (or stringent fundamentalist ones)—flocked to these new watering holes. The droves started having offspring as smaller congregations dwindled away. A new way of “doing church” was in town, and it seemed to be primed for being the ideal model for pastors to emulate if they wanted their congregations to survive the coming millennium. However, critics of this ecclesiology came to the forefront. They complained of shallow theology, entertainment over discipleship, emotionalism, cults of ego, lack of accountability, giganticism (in terms of architecture, size, and theology), consumerism, the prosperity gospel, lack of reverence, therapeutic spirituality, and a host of other spiritual maladies. Most devastatingly, many of the megachurch’s harshest critics came from its own children. In addition, the majority of Americans that remained in smaller congregations also tended to sympathize with these critiques. Indeed, it is almost a truism now to hear a diatribe about the apparent evils of megachurch-style religion.
  
• Where Are the People? (theamericanscholar.org)
  The Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California, is one of America’s largest and most celebrated ecclesiastical buildings. At 60,000 square feet and designed by architect Philip Johnson, it was until recently the sanctuary of Robert H. Schuller, once one of the country’s most prominent and influential Christian ministers. In September 1980, when he dedicated the cathedral at an opening ceremony (“To the glory of man for the greater glory of God”), Schuller was at the height of his influence, preaching to a congregation of thousands in Orange County and reaching millions more worldwide via the Hour of Power, a weekly televised ministry program. Among the show’s annual highlights were “The Glory of Easter” and its companion production, “The Glory of Christmas,” multimillion-dollar dramatic extravaganzas staged inside the cathedral with a cast of professional actors, Hollywood-grade costumes, and live animals. The setting for the spectacles was a striking, soaring, light-filled structure justly praised by architecture critics. But it was not a cathedral. It was never consecrated by a religious denomination. The building is not even made of crystal, but rather 10,000 rectangular panes of glass. Like the much beloved, much pilloried Disneyland three miles to the northwest, the Crystal Cathedral is a monument to Americans’ inveterate ability to transform dominant cultural impulses—in this case, Christianity itself—into moneymaking enterprises that conquer the world.
• Getting High on God (seattleweekly.com)
  
  Karl Marx famously said that religion is the opiate of the masses, and now a new study from sociologists at the University of Washington suggests that attending a Protestant megachurch actually does produce a high much like being on drugs.
  
  The study, titled " 'God Is Like a Drug . . . ': Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches," is the work of UW professor James Wellman and grad students Katie E. Corcoran and Kate Stockly-Meyerdirk. The trio pored over 470 interviews with attendees of 12 megachurches from across the United States.

Phoenicians sacrificed infants

A new paper co-authored by Peter van Dommelen, the Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and professor of anthropology, attempts to put to rest a long-standing mystery about infant bones found in Phoenician cemeteries in modern Tunisia and Italy. Experts have long been conflicted over whether the bones, found packed in urns and buried under tombstones, were the result of ritualistic sacrifices or simply carefully buried remains of children who died before or soon after birth. Van Dommelen's research, conducted with colleagues from several European institutions, concludes that the Phoenicians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for special favors from the gods. Published in the journal Antiquity, the researchers used the manner in which the remains were buried and the inscriptions on the tombstones as evidence that pointed toward the sacrifice rather than natural death. Additionally, although hundreds of remains were found, there were far too few to account for all of the stillbirths and infant deaths in that area, according to the study.

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Related articles

• Cemetery or Sacrifice in Carthage... Again (bonesdontlie.wordpress.com)
  About a year and a half ago, I posted an article about the Tophet of Carthage. The cemetery was used for over 600 years, between 730 BCE and 146 BCE, and there are no adult graves found at the site, only those of infants, lambs, and goat kids. The grave markers all have dedications to either Baal or Tanit, the patron gods of Carthage. The designation of the word tophet to the site is in reference to the Hebrew word topheth, which means “place of burning”.
• Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say (sott.net)
  Argument has raged on the subject since cemeteries known as tophets - after the biblical account of a place of sacrifice - were excavated in the early 20th century on the outskirts of Carthage in modern Tunisia, and then at other Carthaginian sites in Sicily and Sardinia. The graves held tiny cremated bones carefully packed into urns, buried under tombstones giving thanks to the gods. One has a carving which has been interpreted as a priest carrying the body of a small child. Some archaeologists and historians saw the finds as proving ancient accounts of child sacrifice; others insisted they showed tender respect for cherished children who died before or soon after birth.
• Ancient Greek stories of ritual child sacrifice are true, study claims (forum.prisonplanet.com)
  After decades of historians denying that the Carthaginians sacrificed their children as described in Greek accounts, a new study claims to have found ‘overwhelming’ evidence that the ancient civilisation really did carry out bloodthirsty practice.
  Carthaginian parents ritually sacrificed young children as an offering to the gods and laid them to rest in special infant burial grounds, according to a team of international researchers.
  
  The city-state of ancient Carthage was a Phoenician colony located in what is now Tunisia. It operated from around 800BC until 146BC, when it was destroyed by the Romans.
  Babies of just a few weeks old were sacrificed by the Carthaginians at locations known as tophets.
  Dedications from the children's parents to the gods are inscribed on slabs of stone above their cremated remains, ending with the explanation that the god or gods concerned had 'heard my voice and blessed me'.
  
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2544728/Ancient-Greek-stories-ritual-child-sacrifice-Carthage-TRUE-study-claims.html
• Phoenician Gods and Goddesses (lmoffner.wordpress.com)
  The phoenicians were a vile people. They sacrificed their offspring on a wim. There are gravesites filled with the bodies of young children in pottery jars.
• It's not just ancient Roman propaganda: Carthaginians really did sacrifice children (rawstory.com)
  “This is something dismissed as black propaganda because in modern times people just didn’t want to believe it,” said Josephine Quinn, a lecturer in ancient history at Oxford, who is behind the study, with international colleagues, of one of the most bitterly debated questions in classical archaeology.
  “But when you pull together all the evidence – archaeological, epigraphic and literary – it is overwhelming and, we believe, conclusive: they did kill their children, and on the evidence of the inscriptions, not just as an offering for future favours but fulfilling a promise that had already been made.
  
• Despite naysayers, archaeologists assert thesis about child sacrifice in ancient #Carthage http://t.co/aIeF98LyIA (theguardian.com)
  "The inscriptions are unequivocal: time and again we find the explanation that the gods 'heard my voice and blessed me'. It cannot be that so many children conveniently happened to die at just the right time to become an offering – and in any case a poorly or dead child would make a pretty feeble offering if you're already worried about the gods rejecting it."
  "Then there is the fact that the animals from the sites, which were beyond question sacrificial offerings, are buried in exactly the same way, sometimes in the same urns with the bones of the children."
  Although hundreds of remains were found, there were far too few to represent all the stillbirth and infant deaths of Carthage. According to Quinn, there were perhaps 25 such burials a year, for a city of perhaps 500,000 people.
  
• Homerica 4 - the Mediterranean Theory (la) (spacezilotes.wordpress.com)
  The Anasazi built acropoles and fortresses very much alike to those of Mycinae, constructed roads, amphitheaters and irrigational works. They conducted solar observations and constructed clay pots and pottery similar to those of the Greek geometric period. The symbols and the designs of Anasazi which are carved on stones, their ceramic designs and especially their myths which were salvaged by Hopi, offer light to things which for the ‘specialists’ remain ‘unsolved mysteries’. The French writer Pierre Honorre notes that ‘the Maya writing is entirely identical with the Minoan Linear A’. A jar originating from Crete that was discovered in Bimini creates an unexpected so called ‘riddle’. Copper made double sided axes from Crete were found in Washighton and Ohio of the U.S.A.(What can all these mean? ).
• Set in Stone (warnerwriting.wordpress.com)
  Whether or not you plan to have an epitaph, “Plan Your Epitaph Day” is a reminder to make your own final plans now instead of leaving them for others to handle later.
• When cemeteries become private property (mysecuritysign.com)
  Property rights are, essentially, the right to exclude. But practice, and sometimes law, particularly in Southern states where century-old family cemeteries are a part of the fabric of the area’s cultural heritage, have allowed continued access to cemeteries despite standard private property laws.