Last Week's Recommended Reading

I sent this out to my church e-mail list last Friday.  It just took me a while to stick it up here on the blog.  If you missed any of these, however, they are still worth reading six days later!

• Bill Tammeus has been on a roll this week with two pieces I appreciated: the first deals with churches welcoming (or not) people with disabilities and the second is a review of Bill O'Reilly's book Killing Jesus.  The latter reminds us that when Christians get the story of Jesus' death wrong the results are usually really bad (e.g. Spanish Inquisition, pogroms, Holocaust, etc.) 
• This past year at the United Church of Christ General Synod (its biennial national meeting) those gathered voted to have the denomination and all its subsidiaries divest from companies who produce fossil fuels.  Here's an article in Slate that argues divestment doesn't make much of an economic impact, but publicly shaming corporations may be a good way to make change.  
•  Last week I shared an article about Pope Francis in the New Yorker that was largely positive towards the pontiff.  This week, I offer you a rejoinder by a Roman Catholic feminist theologian who thinks we are all hitting the "papal LIKE button" too soon.
• On my list of books to pick up, is Molly Worthen's Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism thanks to this great book review.  All of us get e-mails from friends and family members who forward on stuff about evolution being a hoax, Obama being a secret Muslim, America no longer being a Christian Nation, etc.  This book offers a reason why such views are an enduring part of the American landscape.  (Any who have wrestled with philosopher Charles Taylor's A Secular Age will be especially interested in this review.)
•  Raise your hand if you heard or read someone this past week declaring the polar vortex proves there is no global warming!  If so, you should send them this op-ed by UCC theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite who deals with that question and talks about sins against the environment.
• I am definitely not a fan of 'N Sync's music, but I'm married to someone who is.  That's the reason I even recognized the name Lance Bass--he was a member of the 90's boy band.  Bass is gay, and this week  he published the remarks his Southern Baptist mother made to her church in support of her gay son.  Very moving!