Category Archives: Faith

Sadness, Depression, and the Dark Night of the Soul

Transcending the Medicalization of Sadness By: Glòria Durà-Vilà An interesting book I happened across today: I found that religion played a crucial role in the way sadness was understood and resolved: symptoms that otherwise might have been described as evidence of … Continue reading

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Why one man started an Instagram account showing churches’ wealth

My parents raised me as Anglican, and I was a reasonably keen member of their church during the ’70s, although I began attending a Pentecostal church’s Youth Group on Friday nights, because: “girls”. Also, the guitar-based music seemed pretty cool … Continue reading

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France’s female dervish takes transcendence online

One of the world’s few female whirling dervishes, Rana Gorgani has opened up Sufism to a wider audience and is now making surprising spiritual connections over Zoom thanks to the pandemic. French-Iranian Gorgani, 37, used to think of whirling — … Continue reading

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The St. Valentine of Valentine’s Day never existed

Tristin Hopper | National Post We all know the origin of Valentine’s Day: Some guy named Valentine was working illegally as a priest – an illicit priest, if you will – he was secretly marrying people against the wishes of … Continue reading

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Neocharismatic Christianity and the Rise of the New Apostolic Reformation

Dale M. Coulter | Firebrand When Paula White called angels from Africa and South America to wage spiritual warfare in the aftermath of the presidential election, she was tapping into the notion of territorial spirits associated with the emergence of … Continue reading

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The Rise and Fall of Carl Lentz, the Celebrity Pastor of Hillsong Church

A charismatic pastor helped build a megachurch favored by star athletes and entertainers — until some temptations became too much to resist. Ruth Graham | NYT In the summer of 2017, the singer Justin Bieber abruptly canceled the remainder of a concert … Continue reading

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Trump has Changed the way Evangelical Christians Think About the Apocalypse

Thomas Lecaque | Published in Greenwich Time In Emily St. John Mandel’s novel “Station Eleven,” survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic do their best to rebuild their lives in northern Michigan. Some of them build an apocalyptic cult premised on the … Continue reading

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Unconscious learning fosters a belief in God, study finds

Brook Hays | UPI People who unconsciously predict complex patterns are more likely to hold a strong belief in God — a god who creates order in an otherwise chaotic universe — according to research published Wednesday in Nature. “Belief … Continue reading

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Evangelical leaders denounce QAnon as ‘political cult,’ ‘satanic movement’

Michael Gryboski | Christian Post Some Christian leaders, including a couple of prominent conservative evangelicals, have denounced the conspiracy theory movement gaining traction in conservative circles known as QAnon. Created by an anonymous online figure in 2017, QAnon claims that … Continue reading

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How Christian Nationalism Moved from the Fringe to the White House

Previously, I’ve written tangentially about the prevalence of right-wing groups that are bent on establishing a Christian theocracy in the United States, so I was interested to come across this article by Karl Richter at the Texas Observer looking at … Continue reading

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Vote the Common Good

As the distance for the 2020 US Presidental Election shortens, and the back-and-forth bickering suggests “civil war” more than “civil discourse”, here’s a USA -based Christian political group that makes sense to me as an outsider. While the usual rhetoric … Continue reading

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“The Holy or the Broken”: The story behind Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

This was going to be the expression of an indignant rant several years in the making, but instead, it’s going to be an admission that I was wrong. Several years ago, while serving as the Music Director at a Montreal … Continue reading

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Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights

“Hanukkah has broad human significance as a festival of liberty and religious freedom, not just for us, but for all people. It is a humanistic festival par excellence. The symbol of Hanukkah is light and the real miracle is that … Continue reading

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Open Door Moves on as St. Stephen’s Church Closes

St. Stephen’s Westmount, and its community was a pillar of my life for many years. We were a family of imperfect folks from all walks of life in an imperfect building that had stood for generations on the intersection of … Continue reading

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