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Shockingly, even today, it appears that the British courts can get it right. Their record in dealing with “mercy killings” provides evidence that we do not need the blunt instrument of a new law legalising euthanasia/assisted suicide.

Robert Cook, 60, suffocated his wife of 29 years with a plastic bag after she took an overdose. Vanessa Cook had worsening multiple sclerosis and had written of her wish to die. On Friday her husband received a 12-month suspended sentence, after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the ground of diminished responsibility. The judge called it an exceptional case. Last November Stephen Jobling, 52, was also given a 12-month suspended sentence after a bungled suicide pact with his ailing 72-year-old wife. Both survived taking a drug overdose.

Not all “mercy killings” are seen in the same way. Last May a jury found Frank Lund, 52, guilty of murder for smothering his wife. Patricia Lund, 62, suffered from depression and irritable bowel syndrome, but was not terminally ill. The judge called the case “highly unusual, if not unique” and imposed a tariff of only three years.

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S.G. PRESTON IS a Knight of Prayer. Each morning at his Vancouver, Wash., home, he wakes up and prays one of the 50-odd psalms he has committed to memory, sometimes donning a Kelly green monk’s habit. In Durham, N.C., Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and fellow members of Rutba House gather for common meals as well as morning and evening prayer based on the Benedictine divine office. Zach Roberts, founder of the Dogwood Abbey in Winston-Salem, meets regularly with a Trappist monk to talk about how to contemplate God. Roman Catholic monastic traditions loom large in their daily routines – yet all three men are evangelical Protestants.

The image of the Catholic monk – devoted to a cloistered life of fasting and prayer, his tonsured scalp hidden by a woolen cowl – has long provoked the disdain of Protestants. Their theological forefathers denounced the monastic life: True Christians, the 16th-century Reformers said, lived wholly in the world, spent their time reading the Bible rather than chanting in Latin, and accepted that God saved them by his grace alone, not as reward for prayers, fasting, or good works. Martin Luther called monks and wandering friars “lice placed by the devil on God Almighty’s fur coat.” Of all Protestants, American evangelicals in particular – activist, family-oriented, and far more concerned with evangelism than solitary study or meditative prayer – have historically viewed monks as an alien species, and a vaguely demonic one at that.

Yet some evangelicals are starting to wonder if Luther’s judgment was too hasty. There is now a growing movement to revive evangelicalism by reclaiming parts of Roman Catholic tradition – including monasticism. Some 100 groups that describe themselves as both evangelical and monastic have sprung up in North America, according to Rutba House’s Wilson-Hartgrove. Many have appeared within the past five years. Increasing numbers of evangelical congregations have struck up friendships with Catholic monasteries, sending church members to join the monks for spiritual retreats. St. John’s Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Minnesota, now makes a point of including interested evangelicals in its summer Monastic Institute.

“I grew up in a tradition that believes Catholics are pagans,” said Roberts, who was raised Southern Baptist and serves as a pastor in a Baptist church. “I never really understood that. Now I’d argue against that wholeheartedly.”

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Parishioners Give $106,000 over Planned Amount in December 2007;
One Family’s Matching Gift Brings Total to $212,000

By Joy Hunter

(This article was originally appeared in the February/March 2008 issue of the Jubilate Deo, the Newspaper for the Diocese of South Carolina.)

The folks at St. Paul’s, Summerville, believed they were called to something new. Having lived with the old model of stewardship with its fall campaign, pledges and various versions of an every member canvass, lengthy prayer and discernment led the church to abandon the whole package. Instead, the vestry emerged from a year-long Sabbath reflection with a new vision for stewardship. So, beginning in the fall of 2006, for the 2007 budget, they had no stewardship campaign, no pledge cards, no canvas, no reminder notices, and no Sunday offering plates at their main service.

A Whole New Stewardship Paradigm

“We were in a whole new paradigm,” says Rector, Mike Lumpkin. “The operative word became, ”˜We intend to rely upon the Lord’s provision.’ Our task, as a staff and vestry was to pray intentionally, regularly and to trust God for his provision. Meanwhile, we began a long-term project of introducing parish families to authentic financial wellness using Biblically-based financial principles.”

Unfortunately, at the November 2007 Vestry meeting they faced a growing budget deficit. “Our question was, do we go back to the parish and ask them to help?” asked Lumpkin. “We felt like that would be going back to the old model, and we rejected that idea. Instead we stuck with our original plan: faith and prayer.”

Out of that Vestry meeting came the idea of creating a prayer card which was included in every Sunday bulletin in December. Though it didn’t mention finances directly it did call members to offer themselves to God. In addition, the Vestry asked Senior Warden, Scott Poelker, to speak to the congregation, not about finances, but about faithfulness. He agreed with the vestry not to mention the particular circumstances.

That service was a turning point according to many. “I was really touched,” says parishioner Cathie Diggs. “I think what Scott said made people think. It was all about trusting God, and I believe it made people more willing to trust God with their finances.”

A Matching Gift Offer

The same day Scott Poelker spoke, a family came to Mike Lumpkin and said they believed there was a “spiritual stronghold related to generosity” in the church. To counter the stronghold, they were willing to match dollar-for-dollar any gift given to St. Paul’s over and above what individuals had originally intended. The only additional stipulation was that the gift be given by Advent IV, December 23. That left three Sundays and 15 days before the deadline.

“St. Paul’s Vestry has a Sunday luncheon once a month, and it just so happened that our luncheon fell on that day,” said Lumpkin. “The news was received with great enthusiasm,” he said. “One vestry member immediately said, ”˜I’ll commit an additional $1,000 right now!’”

“I met later with the family to go over details,” says Lumpkin. “They wanted to stress that there would be no cap on the gift. I would have thought it would have been quite reasonable to put a cap on it, but they said, ”˜No. This is the way God told us to do it.’”

The church sent out a parish-wide e-mail letting individuals know about the matching challenge. It was also shared during the Sunday services on December 16.

At the December 17 vestry meeting it was reported that 21 families had responded, the parish had received $9,500 as “over and above” gifts. It was also reported that the year-to-date deficit was $84,000! “That response was a disappointment,” said Lumpkin. “We acknowledged that there was a spiritual stronghold and we agreed as a Vestry to pray harder and more intentionally.”

By Friday, December 21 the situation had not changed significantly. “We wondered, again, if we needed to do more, but often messages sent out by the church are considered guilt trips or manipulation, so we didn’t say anything,” says Lumpkin.

A Turnaround

Though nothing more was said to the parish family, Lumpkin sent an e-mail to the vestry on Friday, December 21 asking the vestry to pray more, crying out to the Lord, for the ”˜Over and Above Challenge,’ as it had come to be named, and for year-end generosity through December 31 as well. On Advent IV, December 23, the date the challenge ended, the parish had made sudden significant progress. By then, they had responses from a total of 97 families and $106,000 had been given in “over-and-above” gifts!

Michael called the family about the amount. They were blessed by the turnaround in generosity, but at the same time acknowledged, “That’s a higher amount than we anticipated,” they said. “This is a real stretch for us, as well. But give us a few days. We’re doing this because we know God has called us to.” On Sunday, December 30 the parish received the additional $106,000 gift from that family as well, bringing the total to $212,000!

First Priority ”“ Giving Back to God

At year’s end, the vestry celebrated a $155,000 surplus after closing the books on 2007! The vestry approved three priorities for the initial uses of the surplus: One, to give ten percent to outreach ministries; two, to retire a secondary mortgage; and three, to use a small portion for the 2008 budget. The surplus $50,000 remained for the vestry to prayerfully discern its use.

In reflecting on the experience, Lumpkin said, “It is St. Paul who speaks of ”˜spiritual strongholds’ in II Corinthians 10. He tells us not to use the weapons of the world, but weapons that have divine power to demolish strongholds. We believe intentional, focused prayer, plus the kind of faith that is ”˜certain of what we do not see,’ (Hebrews 11:1) are two of those weapons. Anytime a Scrooge-like spirit of hoarding, indifference and apathy exists in a community, then you’re dealing with a spiritual stronghold only God and the supernatural power of His Spirit can overthrow. To whatever degree that particular stronghold exists at St. Paul’s, the leverage applied at year-end by means of the Over and Above Challenge significantly undermined its walls!”

What a lot of fun.

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Watch the whole inspiring thing.

The other day, I admitted to a friend that I don’t have health insurance.

“What?!” he gasped. “But you’re married. Isn’t that part of the deal?” He reacted as if I had just told him that I believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or a flat tax — something embarrassingly ridiculous. Because that’s what being uninsured is these days — a character flaw. It’s how you can pay taxes, volunteer, donate to public radio and still be considered a drain on society.

As my friend was, you may be wondering, “Seriously, how can you not have health insurance? Don’t you work? Are you illiterate? Do you have no self-worth whatsoever?!” The short answer is, my husband and I are both freelancers so we have no workplace insurance. And the $500-plus monthly premium? You might as well say our health depended on our adding a new wing to our apartment.

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I cannot possibly do it justice without simply saying read it all.

NICHOLAS LASH, professor at Cambridge University, has been one of the most influential theologians in the English-speaking world for the past generation. His work has helped spur the renewal of confidence among orthodox theologians working in mainline academic settings” in the United Kingdom and the U.S. He has engaged philosophers as diverse as Marx and Wittgenstein and drawn on theologians across the spectrum, from Aquinas to liberationists. His own broad reach of interests is reflected in his remark that “to think as a Christian is to try to understand the stellar spaces, the arrangements of micro-organisms and DNA molecules, the history of Tibet, the operation of economic markets, toothache, King Lear, the CIA, and grandma’s cooking–or, as Aquinas put it, ‘all things’–in relation to that uttering, utterance and enactment of God which they express and represent. To act as a Christian is to work with, to alter or, if need be, to endure all things in conformity with that understanding.” A Roman Catholic, he likes to point out that the last Roman Catholic who held his chair at Cambridge (back in the 16th century) was beheaded.

You’ve written that “care with language” is the “first casualty of original sin.” Can you give some examples of poor word care?

Examples are easy: all laziness, carelessness, cliche. I have often quoted a remark that I heard Gerald O’Collins, the Australian Jesuit, make 40 years ago: “A theologian is someone who watches their language in the presence of God.” The church becomes an academy of word care to the extent that people learn that even the most academically demanding and technical theology has to be done, at least metaphorically, on one’s knees, with one’s shoes off.

One of your books is titled Believing Three Ways in One God. Doesn’t this approach to understanding the Trinity fall into what Theology 101 classes teach is the heresy of modalism?

If such classes do teach that, then the teachers should be shot…

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Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has sent a public letter to national election pollsters, blasting them for only asking Republicans about their religious practices.

“So far, exit polls, media reports and pundits have largely missed the story because they’re using an outdated script, which leaves the impression that religion and faith matter only to Republicans,” Dean said in a letter on Friday.

Following on earlier complaints by progressive evangelicals, Dean notes that Democratic voters in the Iowa caucuses and Michigan primary weren’t asked about their religion, while Republicans were. In South Carolina, exit pollsters asked Republicans extensively about their faith, while Democrats were only asked how often they attend worship services.

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Religions seem ancient, and many are. But they all began somewhere, and a considerable number began in the USA. The most successful new religious movements of the 19th and 20th centuries ”” Mormonism and Scientology ”” were both “made in America.” And according to J. Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, Americans continue to pump out new religions at a rate of about 40 to 50 per year.

For the past two years, I have asked students in my introductory religion courses at Boston University to get together in groups and invent their own religions. They present their religious creations to their classmates, and then everyone votes (with fake money in a makeshift offering plate) for the new religions they like best. This assignment encourages students to reflect on what separates “winners” and “losers” in America’s freewheeling spiritual marketplace. It also yields intriguing data regarding what sort of religious beliefs and practices young people love and hate.

The new religious concoctions my students stir up might seem to mirror the diversity of American religion itself. Students tantalize one another with a religion (Dessertism) that preaches the stomach as the way to the soul, another (The Congregation of Wisdom) that honors Jeopardy! phenom Ken Jennings as its patron saint, and yet another (Exetazo) dedicated to sorting out the pluses and minuses of all the other religions so you can find a faith tailored to your own unique personality.

What strikes me most about my students’ religions, however, is how similar they are…

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