Word: pastorate
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...concluding chapter, Darwin noted that a pastor who ran a school for the blind told him that "those born blind" and "those gifted with eyesight" display facial expressions equally well. But somehow it took more than 130 years for someone to test this hypothesis scientifically. Matsumoto has finally proved the hypothesis. He examined 123 photographs taken by Willingham, a professional photographer, and carefully coded all the expressions on the athletes' faces. The authors found that regardless of whether the athletes could see, the gold-medal winners were significantly more likely to display real, joyful smiles - those that engage not just...
...almost half a century, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, who died on Jan. 8 at age 72, stood against the conventional view that religion has no place in public life. The son of a Lutheran pastor (as he too was for many years), he became an antiwar and civil rights activist in the '60s and a leading religious conservative in the '70s, jolted into that role by the troubling moral implications he found in Roe v. Wade. In 1990 he converted to Roman Catholicism, though he thought he was beyond easy categorization, describing himself as "religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically...
That schedule of Christmas events is now the default tradition for most Americans. Some pastors understand the cultural emphasis but consider it an obstacle to focusing on the spiritual messages of Christmas. "We've seen churches embrace the Americana idea of Christmas," says Michael Hidalgo, lead pastor at the multi-denominational Denver Community Church. "Their heart is in the right place, but in some ways they end up looking like Target celebrating Christmas." Others, though, have accepted the idea that Christmas Day is a time for family instead of religious reflection. "I think it is our job to get Christmas...
...idea that Christmas Eve is a prime marketing opportunity to attract new members is widespread among pastors. In online forums, they give each other advice on crafting services that are broken down into digestible segments that will "hold the attention" of infrequent church-goers. (They also devote considerable space to trading concerns about the fire hazards posed by those Christmas Eve candles their congregants love holding.) One pastor said he considered regular Sunday services at his church to be "seeker-friendly," but holidays like Christmas and Easter were "seeker-focused." The irony is that by holding Christmas Eve services that...
...have a message of hope for gays: they can magically become heterosexuals. (He didn't explain how, but I suspect he thinks praying really hard would do it, as if most of us who grew up gay and evangelical hadn't tried that every night as teenagers.) Homosexuality, Pastor Warren explained in the virtually content-free language of the dogmatist, is "not the natural way." And then he went right for the ick factor, the way middle-school boys do: "Certain body parts are meant to fit together...