Joel Osteen Story and Nashville Statement Raise the Question, What Good Do Churches Do? — #EmptyThePews More Important Than Ever

Victoria & I are praying for everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey. Please join us as we pray for the safety of our Texas friends & family.

— Joel Osteen (@JoelOsteen) August 26, 2017

How about you open the doors to your 16,000 person, $100 million church instead? https://t.co/7Qyuo0rtFJ

— jordan 🌹🌹 (@JordanUhl) August 28, 2017

As hurricane Harvey has devastated southeastern Texas and is now moving to Louisiana, there has been lively discussion, especially on social media, about the initial refusal of prosperity-gospel preacher Joel Osteen to open his Houston megachurch to those displaced by flooding. Osteen eventually responded to the negative publicity he and his church were earning by saying that he will admit people in need of shelter after other shelters are at maximum capacity. 

U.S. Catholic Bishops Address Racism After Charlottesville: Critical Questions Arise

After Charlottesville, the U.S. Catholic bishops have created an Ad Hoc Committee on Racism. The committee will presumably address racism within the U.S. Catholic community — as a problem worth talking about in an open way, a problem we can no longer pretend about as we vote in tandem, year after year, with white evangelical voters whose resistance to the agenda of the Democratic party is patently rooted in racism, while we claim that voting in this way is a "pro-life" choice and that motivation exonerates us of racism. As some commentators are noting, this facing of reality is going to prove to be a difficult task for the U.S. bishops, given their choice some years ago to ally themselves with overtly racist right-wing white evangelicals, and to bless the Republican party as God's anointed party, when it has been using race-baiting as a potent political tool since the Nixon era. 

Chronicles of Life in Small Stone, Arkansas: For the Fun of It (Because Sometimes We Need to Laugh)

So this happened today: 

Eclipse Pulls the Veil from Some of the Darkest, Looniest (Yes, an Eclipse Joke) Corners of American Christianity

Monday's eclipse pulled the veil away from some of the darkest, looniest (yes, an eclipse joke) corners of American Christianity — which we're discovering in the Trump era are really mainstream U.S. white Christianity, after all. An astonishing number of our fellow citizens buy into this toxic nonsense.

Trump's Evangelical Court Prophets: Discussion of Their Refusal to Criticize Him Now Widespread

#EmptyThePews
I walked away because I do not believe in their Republican Jesus.

— Linda Quest (@windmillcharger) August 18, 2017

As CEOs shut down their advisory council in disgust with his Charlottesville remarks, the refusal of Trump's court-prophet evangelical preachers to renounce their role as faith advisors to the president (there is no formal advisory board) is gaining wider and wider attention:

White, Male, Heterosexual or Heterosexual Posturing — and Privileged to the Nth Degree: What Charlottesville Marchers Had in Common

As I watch video clips of and read articles about the young white men who made it their business to run to Charlottesville and march in a Nazi + Klan hate march, I'm struck by their sameness: same young white male faces, over and over again. Oh, I know, the features vary, the haircuts may be different. But these are an iteration of a type, over and over again: white, male, heterosexual or heterosexual-posturing.

At #EmptythePews, Evangelicals Speak Out About Choice to Leave Churches After Election of Donald Trump: Is There Parallel Catholic Discussion?

We don't live in 325, or 400, or 1200, or 1600.  We are living now, and Jesus is calling us to the work of the Kingdom now.  The things that were said and done in the past can be a resource and a guide for us, but the work is in the here and now.  We cannot hide from that work by taking refuge in the past.  The past will not save us, and it will not save anyone else. . . . 

White American Christianity has a horrible track-record on race. Christianity generally has a horrible track-record with regard to gender and LGBT issues. If we feel like we have to live with one foot in the past, we get into a position where we feel we have to "deal" with that reality. But our attempts to "deal" with that reality almost inevitably lead to paralysis, because there is no way for us to "deal" with these facts. The past consists of ghosts, and all of these attempts to "deal" with them just give them more power. The only solution is to move forward and focus on the world that we live in, the one Jesus is calling us to work with.  I can't change the fact that the Kingdom as expressed in previous eras did not do right by all sorts of folks, but I can work to make sure the Kingdom is doing right by those people now.   

That, to me, is what Jesus means by "let the dead bury their own dead."  

~ Michael Boyle, "Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead"