Via the Orthodox convert list (*), a Gallup poll that studied how much people in different states attend church regularly — HERE. Mississippi was at the top with 63% weekly church-goers; Vermont at the bottom with 23%.
Not a lot of surprises there. Just as you might think, southerners went to church the most, except for […]

I understand the state’s insistence that Christianity not be given preference. But that doesn’t help me make my way smoothly through these two cases, documented in a Wall St. Journal piece entitled “Christian Girls, Interrupted”:
Two Christian girls. Two sets of distraught parents. And two state courts smack in the middle of it.
One of these courts […]

Our little onboard intro to Dublin says: Intimate and friendly, compact, relaxed and easy to discover on foot, Dublin is a city full of surprises. It almost looks like a small town with gorgeous architecture left there for safekeeping.
And so it is, with winding streets full of little shops, street performers and lots and lots […]

Gotta give the Catholics a little credit. They know a marketing opportunity when they see one. Are you getting this, camera guy?

I’d kind of worry about the kind of penitents you’d get from this pitch, though. Wouldn’t they be a bit likely to talk real fast and gesture around? Plus, they’d be looking for the […]

This is a re-run of the post I ran last year. But I’m still recovering from Christmas dinner. Besides, it had pretty music to listen to, so what’s not to love?

It’s two days after Christmas now, and the all-Christmas-all-the-time radio stations have all gone back to playing the usual dreck. Have you ever noticed that […]

A church that can no longer hold the 4,000-plus worshippers? Hundreds lined up for the chance to hear a sermon? What’s this, some Bible belt revival? Not unless the Bible belt extends over the Atlantic Ocean*.
Long considered an aggressively secular city, London has quietly become one of Britain’s most Christian areas, going from the least […]

I shouldn’t complain about what we’ve been getting of the hurricane weather. Goodness knows, it’s wreaking havoc further south. Up here in Missouri, all we have to put up with is rain and rain and rain. And rain.
This’ll make my priest cranky. Father Elias goes out to the construction site to oversee the building of […]

The New York Times decided to go on one of its occasional forays into the strange world of alien creatures and talked to (ick) religious people. The occasion for this was to do a tremulous read on whether these strange life-forms are reacting positively to Sarah Palin, but I don’t cite the piece to argue […]

This article (via Orthodox Today) is an interview with a French filmmaker about a documentary he made on the plight of Christians living in the Middle East.
There is much in the article to give us pause (”… They used priests, monks and nuns as human shields. They behaved like barbarians. But nobody reported the […]

I tried to make my way through “The Pilgrim’s Regress” again, armed with “Finding the Landlord: A Guidebook to C. S. Lewis’ Pilgrim’s Regress.” I thought it would help me unravel all the esoteric allegories. I’d love to report that it did, but … nope. I still only partly understand who Mr. Sensible and the […]