Word: virginal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...people believe in miracles, 69% said yes; and the fastest-growing churches in America are the Charismatic and Pentecostal congregations whose worship revolves around "signs and wonders." Tens of thousands of people gather in a pasture in Georgia or a backyard in Lubbock, Texas, because of reports that the Virgin appears in the clouds...
...Author Dan Wakefield, a lapsed Presbyterian turned Unitarian, sometime TV scriptwriter and now itinerant theological investigator, has just finished a book, Expect a Miracle (to be published by HarperSanFrancisco next month). He was amazed by what he learned. "We all read these silly things, the man who saw the Virgin on the fender of his Dodge Dart,'' he says. "What I found, which is more interesting, is people you'd think of as very conservative...
...secular institutions, scholars are drawing on science, archaeology and modern textual criticism to write a chapter of Christianity that makes little mention of miracles except to reject them. They believe the teachings of Jesus are more important than the teachings about Jesus. In this book there is no virgin birth, no walking on water; the healings amount to parlor tricks, and the Resurrection never happened...
...recent years, the Jesus Seminar weighed Christ's actual words as reported in the Gospels, and agreed that in most cases he never said them. Last fall they considered the Virgin Birth, and 96% agreed it never happened. And last month, just in time for Easter, they took up the subject of the Resurrection. The invitation to reporters promised that the experts "will be drilling close to the nerve of the Christian faith...
...years and then see the miracle get rejected." But others suggest it could be stricter still. There is another major miracle-validating body in the Catholic world: the International Medical Committee for the shrine at Lourdes. Since miracles at Lourdes are all ascribed to the intercession of the Virgin Mary, it is not caught up in the saint-making process, which some believe the Pope has running overtime. Roger Pilon, the head of Lourdes' committee, notes that he and his colleagues have not approved a miracle since 1989, while the Vatican recommended 12 in 1994 alone. "Are we too severe...