Terry Pratchett at Worldcon 2005 in Glasgow, August 2005. Picture taken by Szymon Sokół via Wikipedia.

English writer Neil Gaiman. Taken at the 2007 Scream Awards Photo via Wikipedia.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s "Good Omens" is one of those rare books that is irreverent yet thoughtful at the same time.  The story turns on the premise that the Deamon who was the snake in the Garden of Eden and the Archangel who was sent to throw Adam and Eve from Paradise, are in cahoots.  They know that the Anti-Christ has come to Earth and that Armageddon is planned.  But they decide they just can’t let this happen - eternity will be far too boring.  For example, outside of Elgar and Liszt, all the good musicians are in Hell.  Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?

    So together they decide to switch the baby Antichrist and instead of growing up with satanists he grows up in a nice middle class family, has friends and a dog - beginning the ultimate Nature vs. Nurture experiment.

    Will they succeed in staving off The End?  Between their helpers in the form of The Witchfinder Army, Madame Tracy (a soft middle aged sometimes psychic and sometimes dominatrix) and of course Agnes Nutter (the most accurate prophet to ever live,) things could go either way.  They are up against The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - now riding Harleys, and forces of inevitability.

    "Good Omens" brings all the biblical symbolism of the creation story, the Fall and the Book of Revelations into the late 20th century with a tremendous dose of humor.  It really is a laugh out loud, funny book.

  But behind the laughter are some very real and poignant questions: Do we really have free will? And if so, what is our responsibility with it?  

Where do our parent’s expectations for us end and ours start? Maybe more importantly, the book points out that these questions can be handled with humor - a little reminder some of us need. 

By updating the story to the end of the 20th century - and consequently updating the four horsemen of the apocalypse the conceit does allow for a certain amount of commentary about the modern human condition.  Famine, for example, is a diet book guru and owner of a fast food empire, both of which, will deprive you of nutrition and ultimately kill you.

But even the Deamon and Archangel struggle with their destinies and inherent natures - maybe that’s what makes them so likeable.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon are both well-respected writers in their own rights, but I tend to think of "Good Omens" as like "The White Album" - when they got together, what they produced was so much more incredible than anything they could have made on their own.

Students pray during the 2012 Ash Wednesday service at UNCW Catholic Ministry. Photo by Sara Clark

Amanda.Greene@ReligionNews.com

The Rev. Alan J. Dash, sacramental minister and foundng priest at the University of North Carolina Wilmington Catholic Campus Ministry, died early Thursday (May 17) in Wilmington, according to a university press release.

Dash was born in 1937 in New York and ordained in 1967. As a college student, Dash converted to the Catholic Church from Judaism and entered the priesthood soon after. He served in parish ministry in Greenville, North Wilkesboro, Charlotte and Ahoskie. Since 1974, he was active in campus ministry, serving at N.C. State University and UNCW. In 1986, Dash became the first Catholic Campus minister at UNCW when he opened the house on Racine and College Acres Drive.

Dash told one interviewer: “I just wanted to work with people. There are millions of other ways you can do that, but I thought this is what I’m supposed to do with my life. I haven’t been wrong.”

UNCW’s current Catholic Campus minister, Sister Rosemary McNamara, said, the students will miss Dash.

“We are all better human beings for having known him," she said in a press release. "We are grateful for his wisdom, love and commitment in guiding young people as they seek their life’s path.”

Visitation for Father Dash will be at 7-9 p.m. Sunday (May 20) at St. Mark Catholic Church in Wilmington. His funeral Mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Monday (May 21) also at St. Mark. A reception in the parish hall will follow. The funeral is open to the public.

Did you know Father Dash? Feel free to post remembrances of his life and ministry here.

Father Al Dash leads a Mass at the UNCW Catholic Student Center. Photo courtesy of the UNCW Catholic Student Center.

Amanda Greene: 910-520-3958 or

Find Amanda on Twitter (@iwritereligion or @WilmFAVS), Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

Pastor and Mrs. Floyd Morris Photo courtesy of The Pentecostals of Wilmington, thepow.org

The Pentecostals of Wilmington is a church whose faith is truly apostolic in doctrine, tracing their roots to the church Jesus himself started with the outpouring of his spirit, the spirit of God, on all humanity. This event called the Pentecost took place 50 days after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is seen by Pastor Floyd Morris and others of his faith as the gift that Jesus promised his people, the gift of the Holy Ghost. At the time this launched the New Testament Church, whose direction is that still taken by Pentecostal Christians today. As stated more than once in the books of Matthew and Luke, their calling is to go out and teach all nations the word of God and to baptize them in the spirit.

"We preach and teach what Peter, Paul, and all the disciples taught," Morris said with great conviction.

Morris is from New Bern and has served at The Pentecostals of Wilmington located on 3615 Chippenham Drive for nearly 15 years. He actually began his walk of faith with this congregation, until he and his wife left in 1981 to work with a church in Charlotte, where they spent 10 years before returning to Wilmington. In 1997, they helped build the new church where they currently worship, and Morris has been the senior pastor for seven years.

Recently, Morris has been reading a book called “Do Hard Things:  A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations” by brothers Alex and Brett Harris. Written by teens and for teens, this book discusses the major shift in how young adults are treated in this generation, looking deeply into teen culture.  It states that the term “teenager” was nonexistent until being coined in 1941 in an article in Readers Digest. Whereas 100 years ago there were simply children and adults, now those in high school and college are placed in this sort of limbo where they are told to grow up at the same time as being constricted by the notion of “when you’re older”. Fifteen-year-olds once farmed land, commanded ships and started families. Now, in our society, no such responsibility would be required of someone that age. Rather, most teenagers are only expected to do chores, get good grades, and maybe keep a summer job.

“I’m not saying that I would have wanted my daughter to start a family when she was a teenager,” Morris explained. “But I believe that if young people had more faith placed in them, that they will step up and perform. We don’t allow them to realize their own potential.”

Morris shared portions of this book with his congregation and with the youth pastor to consider in his ministry with the young people of the church.

“Kids should know that they have the ability to retain this information,” Morris said. “They need to know that they can do hard things.”

By Daniel Burke

c. Religion News Service 2012

Reprinted with permission

"The proposed attack ad featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright  injected race and religion into the 2012 race in a big way, the NYT reports.

Mitt Romney said he "repudiate(s) that effort," but stood by comments he made in February suggesting that President Obama wants to make America into a "less Christian nation"

The Super Pac that considered running the ads quickly backed away, calling them "merely a proposal."

CNN's Roland Martin says conservatives' plans may boomerang. "You're now putting on the table how African Americans were treated by the Mormon religion. I don't think Mitt Romney really wants to have that conversation, considering he was an elder and his dad was an elder, and they really did not embrace African Americans," Martin said."

Read the rest of the article here.

A Wilmington Prayer Furnace service. Photo by Sara Clark

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Amanda.Greene@ReligionNews.com

The big religion stories of the past decade in the Cape Fear region have been in Brunswick County, in the Mormon population, the Muslim population and in nondenominational churches.

So says the 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study, released in early May. The Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies collected the study data down to the county level nationwide from adherents in 236 religious bodies. And the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) distributed the data.

The 10-year comparison (2000-2010) is missing some data from historically African-American denominations and other church groups as well as data about nondenominational churches in 2000. But the 2010 study itself is more complete and sheds some light on which religious groups are currently thriving in the tri-county area.

The numbers came from each participating religious body supplying the number of churches, full members, adherents and attendees for each county through mail-in surveys and online resources.

In all three counties, Evangelical Protestants, mostly Southern Baptists, still have the highest numbers, but nondenominational church memberships are growing.

Brunswick County

As one of the fastest growing areas in the state, Brunswick County’s population grew by about 47 percent between 2000 and 2010. And its religious population growth followed that pattern, rising about 30 percent.

The Wesleyan Church grew by 1,877 percent and the Catholic church grew by 150 percent with more than 5,000 adherents.

St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church in Shallotte finished a large expansion in 2010. Photo courtesy of St. Brendan Catholic Church.

The Convention of Original Freewill Baptist Churches has grown by 747 percent. The biggest declines were in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church and Church of God of Prophecy.

In 2010, the largest number of congregations were still Southern Baptist at 58. But the study counted 16 nondenominational congregations such as Generations Church in Southport or Crosswinds Church in Leland. In 2000, the SBC dominated the scene with 49 congregations.

Pender County

Pender County saw a 159 percent increase in its Mormon population in the last 10 years, while its Southern Baptist population decreased by 6 percent.

Overall, Pender County congregations reporting for the survey grew by 12 percent.

New Hanover County

But at the area’s population center, there’s a movement toward diversity, though its affiliated population grew only 5 percent in 10 years. But Evangelical Protestants, a quarter of the total population, are still the leaders in growth.

The Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints grew 81 percent. And with three mosques, the survey estimates New Hanover’s Muslim population grew 221 percent. Unitarian Universalists – one congregation - grew 77 percent in that time.

The Evangelical Presbyterian Church was down 53.5 percent and the National Association of Free Will Baptists dropped by 46 percent.

Within the Evangelical Protestants, for the first time, 40 congregations were part of the Southern Baptists while 41 reported themselves as nondenominational. And 10 years ago, the Southern Baptists were the ones reporting the largest numbers of congregations in New Hanover.

Port City Community Church senior pastor Mike Ashcraft preaches the first service at its first satellite location, PC3 Leland. Photo courtesy of Port City Community Church.

The last decade saw the expansion of Wilmington megachurch Port City Community Church and other growing nondenominational churches such as Lifepoint Church and Life Community Church.

But New Hanover’s numbers may paint a more accurate picture of its religious landscape than in the other two counties. Its surveys reached almost half of its residents. In Pender and Brunswick County, the survey accounted for about 30 percent of each county’s populace.

Amanda Greene: 910-520-3958 or

Find Amanda on Twitter (@iwritereligion or @WilmFAVS), Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

The Reverend Oliver White, at his Grace Community United Church of Christ in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood of St. Paul, Thursday morning May 3, 2012. Pioneer Press. RNS photo by John Doman / Courtesy St. Paul

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c. 2012 Religion News Service
Reprinted with permission

    (RNS) The small stack of envelopes that arrives at Grace Community United Church of Christ in St. Paul, Minn., each day are filled with good will and small bills -- ones, fives and tens mostly.

    The donations lift the spirit, said Rev. Oliver White, but they likely won't be enough to save the church.

    "Technically, we should be packing," White said.

    On June 1, the church will likely default on a high-interest loan and lose its building, unless it can come up with $175,000 to buy the loan out.

    As of Wednesday (May 16), Grace Community was about $170,000 short, but its plight has gained considerable attention within and without the UCC, thanks to one of several reasons the predominantly African-American church may lose its home.

    In 2005, White, took a stand at the UCC's General Synod in opposition to many of his congregants and backed support for same-sex marriage. His side won the day at the conference, with about 80 percent of the vote, but White came home to a congregation divided over his belief that gay couples deserve the UCC's blessing. Immediately, he began to watch its numbers dwindle.

    The congregation, founded in 1990 in a relatively poor African-American neighborhood, grew smaller and poorer, and two years later took out a high-interest $150,000 loan, which now has an even higher interest rate of 23 percent.

    When the church was growing financially desperate earlier this spring, a predominantly gay UCC megachurch in Dallas delivered a $15,000 check to help with the interest payments.

    The donation, hand-delivered, gave the remaining members of the congregation hope.

    But an incident earlier this spring in which a gunman drove by the church firing shots and screaming "die faggots," shook the congregation. There were no physical injuries, and it inspired them to fight harder to survive.

    In hindsight, White said, signing the loan was a terrible mistake, and buying it out is the key to the church's survival. White is asking 200,000 people to donate $1 each, working his church networks and with rally.com, an online fundraising tool that has gleaned more than $700 for Grace Community.

    If the goal isn't met, according to the church's statement on rally.com, the pastor's "decision to take a stand in favor of gay marriage rights will have cost him and his small congregation their spiritual home."

    But Grace Community had serious fiscal needs even before White took his stand. And even White acknowledges that the church could have done a better job of managing its money.

    Race also plays a role in the church's plight.

    To many other churches within the generally progressive UCC, the question of same-sex marriage was easily settled in the affirmative.

    But African-American churches have generally been more resistant, making White's stance particularly brave in the eyes of many gay rights proponents -- such as those at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas -- who realized the stakes for Grace Church were particularly high.

    Race also plays into the relationship between White's church and the denomination, and its efforts to keep Grace Community afloat. The UCC's Minnesota Conference counts 135 churches, including one predominantly Native American church and one African-American church -- Grace Community.

    "It's of great interest to us to have ministry in both those communities," said Conference Minister Karen Smith Sellers, citing years of financial assistance to Grace Community from the conference and individual UCC churches, an estimated total of more than $100,000.

    In 2007, the conference, with agreement from Grace Community, decided to diminish its financial support, Sellers said. "We released ourselves from a relationship that began to look unhealthy," she said.

    White attributes only good intentions to the state conference, which, he said, rightfully pointed out that Grace Community's finances could have been better kept and more transparent. But despite the conference's willingness to help, their concerns seemed patronizing to some parishioners, he said.

    "I don't think they meant it to be racist but it came off that way," said White, who met with Sellers on Thursday to discuss the church's future.

    "It could be God has other plans for this congregation," Sellers said before the meeting.

    In the meantime, the donations continue to dribble in, from people of all races, gay and straight alike. White continues to pray for that "miracle check" that will solve his problem.

And David arose and secretly cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. Now it happened afterward that David’s heart troubled him because he had cut Saul’s robe. (1 Sam 24:4-5)

Why didn't David kill Saul? Sure Saul was out to kill David. Sure it was unlawful what Saul was doing. Sure Saul really had it coming.  But David was not going to lift his hand against Saul.

See, when someone has harmed you - hurt you - sometimes later the tables will turn, and you will have the upper hand. The moment when you have control, when you have power over them, when you have them right where you want them, how you conduct yourself in that moment reveals what is in your heart.

In other words, this was a TEST of whether David would take vengeance against Saul, or would he allow God to be his avenger. Would David be obedient to God? The word of God teaches:

Vengeance is Mine, and retribution. (Deut 32:35)

It's clear: We are NOT to partake in retribution. Even when evil is committed against us, we are not to return evil for evil, but good:

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:21)

No doubt, this isn’t an easy thing to do.  When someone cheats me, or talks trash about me behind my back, or insults me, my first reaction is often to want to give it right back to them. And believe me, I’m not going to give them what they gave me!  No! They’re getting MORE!  "You’ll learn not to mess with me, you pull out a stick, I’ll pull a knife!  You pull a knife, I’ll pull a gun!”

Or maybe you’re not the confrontational type. You won't go off, but you will remember. 

“You just wait, one day you’ll need something from me, and see what you get – NOTHING! You’ll walk up and say hello all nice, and I’ll just ignore you – talk to the hand! I’ll show you!”

We play it through in our mind how we will play out the whole scene, smug in our victory.  But the fact is, no matter whether it’s chopping off someone’s head, or giving them the cold shoulder, its still returning evil for evil.  The intent is the same; the only difference is the volume of the vengeance. 

The Apostle Peter gave us some sound advice:

Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing. (1 Pet 3:8-9)

When we are the recipients of some evil, the real question is:  "Am I going to be led by my flesh, which wants payback, or by the Spirit of God, which returns blessing for evil?"

But there is another aspect to consider:  We never know what someone is going through that may have caused that person to treat us badly. If a person lashes out at me, it may be because they're hurting, and that's the only way they know to deal with pain (hurting people hurt people). 

They may not know the grace and peace of the God I know.  God may be allowing that harsh situation in to my life in order for me to be a witness to that person. If I choose payback, it might feel good for a little while, but that response effectively closes the door for me to speak life into that person's life.

But if I return a blessing, it's not only what God has called me to do, it may be the kindness that person needs to open their heart to God. 

My one act of kindness may be the thing that helps lead that person to Christ, and their life will be forever changed.

By Daniel Burke

c. Religion News Service 2012

Reprinted with permission

"GOP activists and a conservative billionaire are working on campaign ads that tie President Obama to controversial comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to the NYT.

“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal leaked to the Times.

Tensions between the Archdiocese of Washington and Georgetown University are escalating ahead Friday's address by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the Jesuit school.

The Vatican dismissed former Canadian bishop Raymond Lahey, who was convicted of possessing child pornography, from the clerical state."

Read the rest of the article here. 

Christian apologist N.T. Wright's insistence that Christianity has got it all wrong seems to mark a turning point for the serious rethinking of heaven. RNS photo courtesy HarperOne

c. 2012 Religion News Service
Reprinted with permission

(RNS) The oft-cliched Christian notion of heaven -- a blissful realm of harp-strumming angels -- has remained a fixture of the faith for centuries. Even as arguments will go on as to who will or won't be "saved," surveys show that a vast majority Americans believe that after death their souls will ascend to some kind of celestial resting place.

But scholars on the right and left increasingly say that comforting belief in an afterlife has no basis in the Bible and would have sounded bizarre to Jesus and his early followers. Like modern curators patiently restoring an ancient fresco, scholars have plumbed the New Testament's Jewish roots to challenge the pervasive cultural belief in an otherworldly paradise.

The most recent expert to add his voice to this chorus is the prolific Christian apologist N.T. Wright, a former Anglican bishop who now teaches about early Christianity and New Testament at Scotland's University of St. Andrews. Wright has explored Christian misconceptions about heaven in previous books, but now devotes an entire volume, "How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels," to this trendy subject.

N.T. Wright's 'How God Became King' RNS photo courtesy HarperOne

Wright's insistence that Christianity has got it all wrong seems to mark a turning point for the serious rethinking of heaven. He's not just another academic iconoclast bent on debunking Christian myths. Wright takes his creeds very seriously and has even written an 800-plus-page megaton study setting out to prove the historical truth of the resurrection of Jesus.

"This is a very current issue -- that what the church, or what the majority conventional view of heaven is, is very different from what we find in these biblical testimonies," said Christopher Morse of Union Theological Seminary in New York. "The end times are not the end of the world -- they are the beginning of the real world -- in biblical understanding."

Still, the appearance of a recent cover story in Time magazine suggests that putting-the-heaven-myth-to-rest movement is gaining currency beyond the academy. Wright and Morse say they have both made presentations on heaven research at local churches and have been surprised by the public interest and acceptance.

"An awful lot of ordinary church-going Christians are simply millions of miles away from understanding any of this," Wright said.

Wright and Morse work independently of each other and in very different ideological settings, but their work shows a remarkable convergence on key points. In classic Judaism and first-century Christianity, believers expected this world would be transformed into God's Kingdom -- a restored Eden where redeemed human beings would be liberated from death, illness, sin and other corruptions.

"This represents an instance of two top scholars who have apparently grown tired of talk of heaven on the part of Christians that is neither consistent with the New Testament nor theologically coherent," said Trevor Eppehimer of Hood Theological Seminary in North Carolina. "The majority of Christian theologians today would recognize that Wright and Morse's views on heaven represent, for the most part, the basic New Testament perspective on heaven."

First-century Jews who believed Jesus was Messiah also believed he inaugurated the Kingdom of God and were convinced the world would be transformed in their own lifetimes, Wright said. This inauguration, however, was far from complete and required the active participation of God's people practicing social justice, nonviolence and forgiveness to become fulfilled.

Once the Kingdom is complete, he said, the bodily resurrection will follow with a fully restored creation here on earth. "What we are doing at the moment is building for the Kingdom," Wright explained.

Indeed, doing God's Kingdom work has come to be known in Judaism as "tikkun olam," or "repairing the world." This Hebrew phrase is a "close cousin" to the ancient beliefs embraced by Jesus and his followers, Wright said.

"It's the recovery of the Jewish basis of the Gospels that enables us to say this," Wright said. "We are so fortunate in this generation that we understand more about first-century Judaism than Christian scholarship has for a very long time. And when you do that, you realize just how much was forgotten quite soon in the early church, certainly in the first three or four centuries."

Christianity gradually lost contact with its Jewish roots as it spread into the gentile world. On the idea of heaven, things really veered off course in the Middle Ages, Wright said.

"Our picture, which we get from Dante and Michelangelo, particularly of a heaven and a hell, and perhaps of a purgatory as well, simply isn't consonant with what we find in the New Testament," Wright said. "A lot of these images of hellfire and damnation are actually pagan images which the Middle Ages picks up again and kind of wallows in."

Wright notes that many clues to an early Christian understanding of the Kingdom of heaven are preserved in the New Testament, most notably the phrase "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," from the Lord's Prayer. Two key elements are forgiveness of debts and loving one's neighbor.

While heaven is indisputably God's realm, it's not some distantly remote galaxy hopelessly removed from human reality. In the ancient Judaic worldview, Wright notes, the two dimensions intersect and overlap so that the divine bleeds over into this world.

Other clues have been obscured by sloppy translations, such as the popular John 3:16, which says God so loved the world he gave his only son so that people could have "eternal life."

Wright offers a translation that radically recasts the message and shows how the passage would have been heard in the first century. To hear it today is to experience the shock of the new: God gave his son "so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God's new age."

"And so it's not a Platonic, timeless eternity, which is what we were all taught," Wright said. "It is very definitely that there will come a time when God will utterly transform this world -- that will be the age to come."

"Granted, the Democrats, in their questionable wisdom, devised this slot machine approach to fiscal responsibility. It’s the Republicans, who argued so vehemently against it originally on moral grounds, who now refuse to abolish it."

Blogger David Scott, Politics + Religion, about his opposition to the N.C. Education Lottery on ethical grounds.

WilmingtonFAVS.com

What is wrong with this picture? 

You go to the grocery or convenience store and you see a line of people queued up buying lottery tickets.  Many look like it might be their last ten bucks and money they should have spent on groceries.

Then you go home to watch the local news and you hear about another cut in our state’s education budget.  Teachers are laid off.  Class sizes growing.  Roofs leaking.  Not enough computers or textbooks.  Reduction in teachers’ benefits.  Hardly enough gasoline to run the school buses.

Then the TV moderator does the “Legislative Update” and reports our “leaders” in Raleigh bowing at the “Altar of No Taxation,” kissing the ring of their misguided speaker, then scurrying to the Legislative Cafeteria to stuff themselves on North Carolina seed corn.

A temporary break in programming brings another in a series of cheesy ads for the N.C. Education Lottery. Some clown on screen urges us to “Spend your last $5 and win $10 Million.  Why not be rich, drive a new car, and live in luxury?”

After the commercial break, back to the news.  The moderator spotlights one of our newly-elected politicians spouting off effusively and endlessly about “jobs, jobs, jobs!”

Give me a break!  Do these guys think we are stupid?  Do they not see the connection here?  Can they not see that by continuing to cut the education budget and refusing to raise taxes that they are forcing the poor lottery ticket buyers to educate our children?  These politicos don’t have the courage to accept this fact and create a system where all our citizens pay their fair share to teach our children.  They camouflage this sham in a disgusting euphemism, the “Education Lottery.”  Taking the last dollar of the poor to support a school system that frequently discriminates against them.  Undereducated students can neither get or hold a job, job, job!

Are we gambling away the future of our state?

Granted, the Democrats, in their questionable wisdom, devised this slot machine approach to fiscal responsibility.  It’s the Republicans, who argued so vehemently against it originally on moral grounds, who now refuse to abolish it.

Who needs leaders like these?

Rev. James Semmelroth Darnell performs a service at St. John United Church of Christ in St. Clair, MO. RNS photo courtesy Rev. James Semmelroth Darnell

    ST. CLAIR, Mo. (RNS) The scene on Tuesday night (May 15) couldn't have been more American -- teams from the local churches, decked in matching T-shirts, faced each other on the softball field as their fellow congregants cheered from the bleachers.

    But in the last two weeks, this league of six church softball teams shrank to five when the pastors of three Baptist churches told one of the participating churches that their teams would no longer take the field against that church's team.

    The problem was not pine tar or steroids, it was the sexual orientation of the new pastor of St. John United Church of Christ.

    "Three congregations said they were uncomfortable playing our team because I am their pastor and I am an out bisexual person," said the Rev. James Semmelroth Darnell, 27, "which is surprising because I don't even play."

    Darnell called the pastors' reaction ridiculous.

    "It seems like my sexuality doesn't have anything to do with how my congregation plays softball," Darnell said. "It's frustrating because this is who is representing Christianity in our community, and this is the message youths in our community are getting."

    Bethel Baptist Church in nearby Lonedell, Mo., is among the churches whose pastors didn't want to compete against the team from Darnell's church.

    "We believe that God's word speaks clearly about boundaries, and that lifestyle is outside of those boundaries," the Rev. Ben Kingston, Bethel Baptist's pastor, said Tuesday from behind the backstop.

    Darnell, fresh out of Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, came to St. John to replace its previous pastor in October, but it wasn't until two weeks ago that the Rev. Johnny Dover, pastor of Friendship Baptist Church and the league's commissioner, heard a rumor that Darnell was gay.

    "I called their coach and asked if it was true," Dover said.

    Dover, Kingston, and the Rev. Wyatt Otten, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church, decided their teams could no longer play against a congregation that had deliberately called an openly bisexual man to be their pastor.

    "We call ourselves a Christian softball league," Kingston said. "And if we call ourselves that, we want to be that."

    Darnell said his church quit the league after about 12 years of playing rather than ruin it for the rest. "We have an openly lesbian player, too, and that's never been an issue," Darnell said.

    Kingston and Dover said they didn't they know that St. John had been fielding a lesbian. And they said that they had never met Darnell.

    "The sad thing of it is," Dover said, "no matter how good or bad that team is playing, they are always having fun."

    Darnell said he had also felt some tension in the local ministerial alliance, a collection of pastors, but that the members there had decided to allow him to remain despite his sexual orientation.

    "They decided they would benefit from an alternate viewpoint," he said.

    (Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.)

Paul Wilkes on the left with Reena from Home of Hope orphanage in India and DREAMS director Tracy Wilkes on the right with the Salesian Sisters from Home of Hope. Photo courtesy of Tracy and Paul Wilkes

National Geographic magazine traveled to Wilmington recently to feature Paul and Tracy Wilkes for their endeavors working with children locally and in India.

The article titled: "A couple of keepers: Tracy + Paul Wilkes” was part of The Good Traveler column, highlighting good deed doers the world over.

Paul and Tracy Wilkes were highlighted because of Tracy's work with inner city kids and the arts as executive director of DREAMS Center for Arts Education in Wilmington. And they were both highlighted for their work adopting and expanding orphanages in India and establishing a network of nonprofit funding for Homes of Hope India.

Writer Aric S. Queen sums up their life and works together this way: "Paul and Tracy Wilkes. A writer and a theatre major. Both doing wonderful things in Wilmington for local kids and kids halfway around the world. Do their type-A personalities ever turn competitive? “No,” Tracy laughs. 'At least not with the charities.'"

- Amanda Greene

Religious sports stars are being more public about their beliefs these days whether it's football star Tim Tebow's famous black scrawl of John 3:16 on his face or Jeremy Lin's public professions of faith. Both were named to Time magazine’s “The 100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Christian sports stars are also looked to as role models and their lives scrutinized by the press.

This week, the New York Post reported Jeremy Lin was possibly sighted in New York partying.

What do you think about that? Should the press just let the guy live his life?

Take a look at Beliefnet's handy list of famous Christian sports stars here.

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While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week.

While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week. Photo by Amanda Greene

While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week.

"Yeah, we were just saying how George is already complaining about his feet from all this standing, but come Friday night when our work is done, he'll be the first one out on the dance floor."

John Poulos, Greek Festival volunteer speaking of fellow volunteer George Kmaridis and his love of the Greek dancing during St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church's 20th Greek Festival May 18-20

WilmingtonFAVS.com

A Broadway street sign in New York City. Photo by Aimée Tyrrell, December 2005 via Wikipedia.

Editor's note: This is a daily feature of religious thumb-suckers or just plain news of the weird.

Has Broadway found religion? For the moment, it seems it has with a series of faith-themed shows, reports the Catholic News Service.

Look for "Godspell," "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Leap of Faith," "Sister Act" and "The Book of Mormon."

And you can read the rest of the story here.

Have you seen any of these shows? What did you think?

By Kevin Eckstrom

c. Religion News Services 2012

Reprinted with permission

"A group of Baptist churches in Missouri has pulled out of a softball league because one of the teams hired a gay pastor. ""We call ourselves a Christian softball league," the Rev. Ben Kingston said. "And if we call ourselves that, we want to be that."

Franciscan University, an outpost of Catholic traditionalism in Ohio, is dropping its insurance plan for students rather than comply with the proposed Obama mandate to include birth control coverage.

Africa-Americans remain the religious group that's most opposed to gay marriage, but more than half (54%) have a favorable impression of President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage.

The feds say Hertz officials at SEATAC were totally within the law when they asked Somali Muslim employees to clock out for their daily prayers."

Read the rest of the article here.

Church workers have already started making food, including these steak kabobs, for the 20th anniversary of Greek Fest in Wilmington May 18-20. Photo by Amanda Greene

While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week.

While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week. Photo by Amanda Greene

Pastry co-chairwomen Maria Stasios and Tia Saffo cut pastries before the Greek Festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

Party Suppliers erect the massive festival tent outside St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on College Road before the festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

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While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week.

While laughing and conversing in Greek, volunteers at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church stuffed bits of steak, onions and green pepper onto skewers to prepare for Greek Festival this week. Photo by Amanda Greene

Amanda.Greene@ReligionNews.com

One Greek Festival years ago, pastry co-chairwoman Tia Saffo worked with her 29-day-old baby in tow. Matthew Kirkby and his bride returned early from their Myrtle Beach honeymoon to work the festival with her family at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church.

And every year, John Poulos spends his vacation time cutting meat and - generally cutting up - with his church friends in St. Nicholas' kitchen preparing kabob cubes and other meats for the festival which attracts about 20,000 people each year. 

John Poulos and John Psilos cut meat for gyros and kabobs for Wilmington's 20th Greek Festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

When St. Nicholas Greek Festival kicks off its 20th year Friday-Sunday (May 18-20), weeks of work have already taken place to make the 10,000 pastries, 1,200 shish kabobs, 4,000 gyros, many other Greek dishes, setting up about 800 chairs and tables, tents, water lines and vendor areas. The festival runs 11 a.m.-10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m.- 7 p.m. on Sunday with daily church tours, vendors, Greek music, cooking demonstrations and food.

"It's like being in a comedy club for a week," joked the other John in the kitchen, John Psilos as he and four other guys sliced beef for kabobs earlier this week.

"These guys keep me coming back," Poulos added. "We're here promoting our culture and faith among the community and each other, but it's nice to be together each year."

And because the festival has become such a well-oiled machine through the years, in many cases, the unsung heroes of the Greek festival are the only ones who know what they do.

That's a point of worry for Maria Stasios, a 20-year volunteer at the festival and pastry co-chairwoman with Saffo.

20-year Greek festival veteran Maria Stasios is handy with an electric knife cutting pans of pastries for the festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

"We need to be writing down what we all do, because if, God forbid, one of us should drop dead, who would know how to do their job," she said. "You're always looking for someone younger to take over."

Stasios found that person in Tia Saffo, teaching her the ropes of how to organize pastry bake days, buying ingredients and arranging them in stations so bake volunteers from the church can swiftly assemble each recipe.  And then after the baking's done, another group cuts the pastries and places them in cups for sale during festival weekend.

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Party Suppliers erect the massive festival tent outside St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on College Road before the festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

For instance Kirkby knows where to direct Party Suppliers to place the large white festival tent each year so the tent stakes don't burst a sewer or gas line for the church. 

"This benefits the community and the church, and I just keep doing it," Kirkby said, adding that a large group of his co-workers who don't attend the church also volunteer to help each year. Plus, his son cooks with him on the gyro line.

Volunteers preserve thousands of Greek pastries the church bakes each year for the festival in plastic bins. Photo by Amanda Greene

As Stasios and Saffo pulled out pans of cocunut pastries to cut, Stasios said all the work was worth the fellowship it creates in their church. Saffo held the pan as Stasios cut the bars with her electric knife, while fretting over how straight her knife lines were.

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Pastry co-chairwomen Maria Stasios and Tia Saffo cut pastries before the Greek Festival. Photo by Amanda Greene

"We love the camaraderie of being together teaching younger people to bake," Stasios said, "and that we can share this ethnicity with other people."

In the kitchen, the kabob cubes the men cut ended up in the next room with a group of kabob makers, conversing in Greek and smiling as they stuck the marinated meat onto skewers with onion and green pepper slices.

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Church workers have already started making food, including these steak kabobs, for the 20th anniversary of Greek Fest in Wilmington May 18-20. Photo by Amanda Greene

George Kmaridis has been traveling from Cleveland to St. Nicholas to help cut meat in the kitchens for the festival for the past 13 years. Costas Katsoudas travels from Charlotte to help each year, too. 

"Yeah, we were just saying how George is already complaining about his feet from all this standing," Poulos teased, "but come Friday night when our work is done, he'll be the first one out on the dance floor."

Amanda Greene: 910-520-3958 or

Find Amanda on Twitter (@iwritereligion or @WilmFAVS), Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

The International Seamen's Center is showing its age with many window's boarded up in its 1940s-era building. Photo by Amanda Greene

Amanda.Greene@ReligionNews.com

At its late April board meeting, the Port of Wilmington approved its support of continuing ties with the International Seamen's Center, though it recognized the need for the center to move to a location just outside the state port's gates.

The Seamen's Center, which is supported by donations from area churches and individuals, has been looking for an alternate location close to the port as its new location since its board voted in January to move from its 1940s-era building. The move will allow more volunteers to help sailors at the center since they won't have to purchase the federal pass or the Transportation Workers Identification Card (TWIC) to enter the port each day.

"Th port is 100 percent behind keeping us attached to the port, but all locations inside the port would not be permanent as the port expands its needs for cargo space," said Seamen Center board president Ron Casterline.

The port has chosen five land locations close to its gates off Burnett Boulevard in Wilmington as potential sites for the new Seamen's Center. The center hopes to apply for grants to purchase a modular building for the site, Casterline said. 

Now, the port's engineering department is considering which site would work best for the Seamen's Center's needs. The port has offered to lease the plot of land it chooses just outside the port to the nonprofit ministry at low cost, Casterline added.

The game room inside The International Seamen's Center inside the Port of Wilmington. Photo by Amanda Greene

But he said the Seamen's Center does not know how long the port's land selection process will take.

Amanda Greene: 910-520-3958

or

Find Amanda on Twitter (@iwritereligion or @WilmFAVS), Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

Maurice Sendak created some of the world’s best-loved contemporary children’s books, including 'Where the Wild Things Are'. RNS photo by John Dugdale/courtesy Harper Collins Publishers

    (RNS) When the mind that first imagined the Wild Things disappeared for good last week, the children-turned-adults who adored Max and his wild rumpus with big-eyed monsters didn't just mourn the loss of Maurice Sendak; they also grieved for their own ever-fading childhoods.

    Since his death on May 8 at age 83, Sendak has been referred to frequently as the most important children's author of the 20th century. His millions of fans crossed borders of age, race, gender, nationality and religion.

    It's a measure of Sendak's imagination that his stories -- so infused with a very particular Jewishness -- are absent evidence of Judaism or anything else besides a good read to his most important readers.

    "As a child, I wasn't thinking about the Jewishness in his books," said Laurel Snyder, an author of children's books. "I was a kid."

Maurice Sendak at the Rosenbach Museum & Library, 1985. RNS photo by Frank Armstrong/ Courtesy, Rosenbach Museum & Library

    Snyder said she grew up with "Zlateh the Goat," a 1966 story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated by Sendak. By then, Sendak had already won the Caldecott Medal, the highest honor for children's literature, for "Where the Wild Things Are," and Singer was one of the most important writers in America.

    The pairing of two American literary superstars for "Zlateh the Goat" was important for both adult and children's literature, said Snyder.

    "Teaming them up not only brought a Jewish book like that into the limelight, but also brought a layer of literary legitimacy into the children's book world," she said.

    Sendak's relationship to Judaism was perhaps most shaped by the Holocaust.

    "The Holocaust has run like a river of blood through all my books," Sendak told The New York Times in 2006. "Anything I did had to deal with that -- with my family, the ruination of my childhood, the humiliation of being a victim."

    Neal Sokol, who included many pieces of Sendak's original artwork in his 2010 show, "Monsters and Miracles: A Journey Through Jewish Picture Books" at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, said Sendak continually used the "ordeals and odysseys" of Jews from both Old World shtetls and New World city streets to inform his stories.

    "Jewish culture defined his work and he wasn't ashamed of that," said Sokol.

Final drawing for 'Where the Wild Things Are' - pen and ink, watercolor. RNS photo © Maurice Sendak, 1963, all rights reserved. Courtesy, Rosenbach Museum & Library

    Sendak, whose parents traveled to the U.S. from Poland in the 1920s, was often sick as a child in Depression-era Brooklyn. His later writings and illustrations borrowed from his memories of childhood's dark corners and the way children can tap into their imaginations to escape those corners.

    "It is always amazing to me that children survive childhood, that they go on to have professional careers and run countries," Sendak said at a talk at Washington University's Graham Chapel in 1989. "I think it's due to their tremendous courage. They have to be very brave. And that loyalty and courage and bravery is the subtext of everything I have ever written."

    Sendak based the monsters in "Where the Wild Things Are" on his aunts and uncles that his parents had managed to bring to Brooklyn from the old country.

    "I hated them all," he said at Graham Chapel. "They were grotesque, with their huge noses, their great cascades of hair, their bad teeth."

    Early in his career as an illustrator, Sendak received commissions from Jewish organizations including B'nai B'rith and the United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education. In 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal, Sendak gave $1 million to the Jewish Board of Family & Children's Services, a mental health and social service agency in New York, where his life partner of 50 years, Eugene Glynn, worked as a psychiatrist.

    When he designed a series of pamphlets on anti-Semitism for the Anti-Defamation League early in his career, Sendak based the drawings on sketches he made of kids in his Bensonhurst neighborhood in the 1940s.

    While Sendak's parents were able to bring his mother's family out of Poland, his father's family was wiped out by the Nazis. As a teenager, Sendak studied the black-and-white photographs of his murdered relatives.

    Patrick Rodgers of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, which houses the largest collection of Sendak's work, said the legacy of the Holocaust is "the biggest thing" in Sendak's work.

    "His relationship to Judaism is a mostly secular one," Rodgers said. "He struggled growing up semi-kosher. He didn't do much in the way of worship. He couldn't relate to the world his family came from, but he became really aware of it when that world was falling apart."

    As absorbed as Sendak was with his Jewish roots, his God was not Abraham's God. In 2003, he told Terry Gross, host of NPR's "Fresh Air," that religion "made no sense to me."

    "You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently?" Sendak asked. "Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson -- she's probably the top -- Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life."

    Rodgers said Sendak's form of worship "was being an artist and trying, almost in a platonic way, to access other art that moved him deeply."

The Chertoff Mural. RNS photo © 1961 by Maurice Sendak, all rights reserved. Courtesy, Rosenbach Museum & Library

    "Listening to Mozart while looking at Blake and transmogrifying them into what he did -- that was his spiritual practice," he said. "That was where his soul was."

    (Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.)

Besides its huge menu of thousands of homemade Greek pastries, dolmathes, spanokopita, gyros, pastitsio, moussaka, tiropita and Greek beans, the church also offers tours of its icon-illuminated sanctuary each day, a marketplace inside the church, cooking demonstrations and Greek dancing each night.

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Church workers have already started making food, including these steak kabobs, for the 20th anniversary of Greek Fest in Wilmington May 18-20. Photo by Amanda Greene

Church Tours are 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. (tour and vesper) on May 18 and May 19. Tours on Sunday (May 20) are 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. (no vespers). Greek dancing each day at 6 p.m., 8 p.m. on May 18, 1:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m. May 19, 1:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. May 20. Cooking demonstrations will be held at 1p.m., 3:30 p.m., 4 p.m., and 5 p.m. on May 18, at 12:30 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., and 6:30 p.m. on May 19 and at 1 p.m., 3:30  p.m., 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on May 20.

The festival began in 1992 and has grown every year by more than 10 percent, with average attendance at about 20,000 people.

Details: 910-392-4444.

- Amanda Greene

c. Religion News Services 2012

Reprinted with permission

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Religious freedom updates: The state can say what’s kosher and what’s not, says an appeals court.

And encouraging parents to use wooden rods to spank misbehaving children, including infants, because the Bible tells you so is actually not protected under the religious freedom doctrine.

But is criticizing your pastor in an online forum protected as freedom of speech? The Oregon pastor in question doesn’t think so, and is suing to the tune of half a million bucks.

Christ and couture: A Texas pastor wants clergy to show some fashion flair.

A painting of the goddess Isis. Photo via Wikipedia.

“If you had to pick a city, anywhere in the world, as the city of the goddess, which one would it be?”

That’s what Mary Alice Merrix asked about a dozen participants in our Full Moon Women’s Circle on April 3, 2012.

Evocative names flew by: “Athens? Cairo? Venice?” This French woman declared: “Paris!”

But none of us were right.

The answer was much closer to home, hidden in plain sight. Mary Alice held up Alan Butler’s book “City of the Goddess: Freemasons, the Sacred Feminine, and the Secret beneath the Seat of Power in Washington, DC.”

Mary Alice Merrix, sitting under an image of the goddess, holds Butler's book "City of the Goddess." Photo by Christine Moughamian

It sounded like the latest Dan Brown mystery. Yet, it was fact.

Of course, I knew that France had her own patron goddess, Marianne, liberty personified as a woman leading the people to “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” England’s patron goddess is Britannia, and New York City is associated with the Statue of Liberty.  

But how could Washington, DC, the U.S. symbol of male patriarchy par excellence, be the 'City of the Goddess'? According to Butler, “Columbia” was chosen as the patron goddess for the Latin word “columba,” meaning dove.

Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Photo via Wikipedia

The dove is associated with the goddess of Minoan Crete, often referred to as “The Dove Goddess.” She is one of the personifications of the Greek goddess Aphrodite (Roman Venus), the Greek Demeter and the Egyptian Isis.

The District of Columbia is located half in Maryland, half in Virginia. Butler recognizes the names honored British royalty, but he argues they refer back to ancient goddess worship of the constellation Virgo and the planet Venus.

My copy of the old book “The Year of the Goddess” by Lawrence Durdin-Robertson, designates May 14 as the day for the Panegyric of Isis, when people gathered in her temples to praise her. Like the Catholic Mary, Isis is Queen of the Heavens, often represented with a crescent moon, a starry cloak and a dove.

I was so intrigued that I interviewed Mary Alice Merrix to unveil the mystery.

CM: Mary Alice, what inspired you to create a ritual centered around this book?

MAM: “I was curious about how the author came to see Washington, DC, a very male city, as the ‘City of the Goddess.’ It was a new concept for me.”

CM: What did you resonate with in particular?

MAM: “The many statues that represent the goddess in Washington, especially the statue on top of the Capitol. Its proposed name was not ‘Freedom’ but ‘Liberty,’ which related back to the goddess references.”

CM: In his book, Butler writes: ‘Freedom is a concept, whereas Liberty actually was the name of a goddess, whose Latinized name was Libertas.

MAM: “Not surprisingly, the patriarchy found a way to change that. It tends to cover up that whole goddess worship thing. They changed her name, but still, the reference is there. Nobody talks about the original meaning. It took this author to uncover it and talk about it so that the rest of us can have access to it.”

CM: Is that what gave you the idea for the discussion in our Circle?

MAM: “I thought it would be interesting to discuss how your views have been radically changed by an event, a book, a person who introduced a new idea, a different way of looking at things. Growing up, you start with what your parents tell you, your teachers, your ministers. At some point, you have to find out what you really believe.”

CM: Was it such an epiphany that led you to our Circle?

MAM: “Our Circle spoke to me like another book spoke to me 25 years ago: ‘When God was a Woman’ by Merlin Stone. I thought about my own truth, different from an outside authority. It was empowering to know the feminine was, at one time, for thousands of years, considered divine. As a woman, it felt right. I looked for like-minded people, which meant mostly women. I found this group. It’s kind of my church, that circle, how it feels for me.”

Thanks to our Circle and Mary Alice, my view of Washington is forever changed.

Can you remember an event, book or person that radically changed your thinking?

"Spirituality is, in my view, a life lived in God's abundant, unconditional love, a love that is given to all without exception. Who we are and what we do with, in, and through that love is ours to choose. I trust they (my children and grandchildren) will choose well and live in harmony with their God and all creation."

Contributor Fran Salone-Pelletier, writing about how her spirituality has changed from her mother's beliefs.

WilmingtonFAVS.com