What’s the difference between religious thinking and “religiosity”? Or, what’s the difference between faith and magical thinking? When I worked at a state mental hospital during my CPE it seemed rather easy to tell the difference in the “closed ward” where patients spent the first stage of their admittance. When a patient claimed to be Jesus Christ it was easy to identify that as delusional thinking. When a patient used religious language disconnected from the reality of their circumstance it seemed easy to diagnose “religiosity.” But what about for most of use church-going religiously committed (no pun intended) run-of-the mill believers? How do we distinguish authentic belief from magical thinking? What distinguishes prayer from wishful thinking?

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GRACE member Mike Harton as a featured piece in the denominational newspaper The Religious Herald. Check it out here. Mike currently is Interim Dean of the Faculty at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.

I find that clergy and educational staff continue to struggle to define the nature and scope (as well as the methods and techniques) of what constitutes Christian education. In some instances people choose one camp over the other, like “formation” over “instruction.” Some have dropped any reference to “education” believing that concept is antithetical to discipleship or to their idea of “Christian formation.”

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Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think I heard more voices than ever this year suggesting that we consider toning down the cultural excesses of Christmas gift-giving.  We’ve certainly not eliminated gift-giving in my world of family and friends, but it has become more modest in recent years.  Counterintuitively, Christmas has not become less important to us; if anything, the opposite is true, because it offers us time as family to be together.

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Against the prevailing but uninformed notion that “I am spiritual, but not religious,” Barry L. Callen (professor of Christian studies at Anderson University, editor of the Wesleyan Theological Journal and founding editor of Anderson University Press) counters that religion and spirituality must coexist. In this book, Authentic Spirituality: Moving Beyond Mere Religion (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001. 271 pages. $18.99. ISBN 0-8010-2288-6) he demonstrates how religious practice and tradition are necessary for authentic Christian spirituality.

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Many of us have followed the work being done at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the religious beliefs of American teens.  “Moralistic therapeutic deism” now rolls off our tongues with growing ease, though it does nothing to ease our minds about the future of the church.  I heard the Rev. Rhonda VanDyke Colby do a highly effective job of interpreting the research to a group of pastoral counselors, social workers and medical personnel recently.  As I listened I heard voices from the past.  This is something that often happens to those of us who have more past than others.  I knew that I had heard similar critiques of current beliefs.  Where and when?

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We have all experienced effective and non-effective learning groups. Why is it that some are effective and others are not? I would argue that learning experiences that provide more time for critical reflection and dialogue result in more effective learning. Peruse the Christian bookstores and take note of how many resources are now encouraging at least a ninety-minute time frame for group study. There’s a reason for that—learning takes time!

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One of those “Aha!” moments came to me twenty-some years ago while staring at the blank computer screen where Sunday’s sermon should have been making its appearance.  Unfortunately, my thoughts were elsewhere; I had been dealing with the parent of one of our confirmands-to-be, who was convinced that I was not doing enough to impress on his son the significance of the rite he would soon undergo.  Sometimes his critique seemed to be that I didn’t make these 6th and 7th graders suffer enough (they thought they suffered plenty) and sometimes it was clear that the father was actually expecting the confirmation process to fill all the spiritual gaps left in the child’s life by church and home.

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The June 26, 2007 issue of the Christian Century features “Top ten things pastors long to hear” from Ruth Tucker’s book, Left Behind in a Megachurch (Baker). Here’s Tucker’s list:

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Scott Bader-Saye’s forthcoming book, “Following Jesus In A Culture Of Fear” deals with the issue of the protection of God. In an excerpt published in the July 10, 2007 issue of Christianity Today, Bader-Saye tells the story of a young man who is dying of cancer named Steve who receives a letter from a woman telling him that she knew it was God’s will for him to be healed, all he had to do was believe. Steve replied to her in a letter saying, in part, “I sincerely hope that if my cancer continues to grow, no one will see it as a failure of my faith in God, but that perhaps people can see me as faithful even if I die while I am still young. I do not claim to understand God’s will, but I do know that I am in God’s hands, whether in life or in death.”

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