The United Methodist Church’s top court has found that while some provisions of the newly adopted Traditional Plan remain unconstitutional, the rest of the plan is valid as church law.

That was the Judicial Council’s ruling on a requested review of the Traditional Plan, which was approved during a special denomination-wide legislative session in February to strengthen enforcement of bans on “self-avowed practicing” gay clergy and same-sex weddings.

In a separate ruling, legislation to provide an exit strategy for local churches wishing to leave the denomination meets three minimum requirements and thus is constitutional “when taken together with the consent of the annual conference” as specifically outlined in the Book of Discipline, the court said.

Both decisions came at the conclusion of the Judicial Council’s April 23-26 meeting.

Read it all.

UMC top court OKs part of Traditional Plan, church exit plan https://t.co/dZnoNVxuCQ pic.twitter.com/H1hZPmsn1F

— EPA Conference UMC (@epaumc) April 26, 2019

O Lord, who by triumphing over the power of darkness, didst Prepare our place in the New Jerusalem: Grant us, who have this day given thanks for thy resurrection, to praise thee in that city whereof thou art the light; where with the Father and the Holy Spirit thou livest and reignest, world without end.

Meal of Our Lord and the Apostles
(Repas de Notre-Seigneur et des apôtres)
James Tissot

…Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ None of the disciples was bold enough to ask, ‘Who are you?’; they knew quite well it was the Lord.
…
John 21:1-14 pic.twitter.com/VKHlNHiLNi

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 26, 2019

He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

–Isaiah 25:8-9

“Those who have been freed and raised up follow the light. The light they follow speaks to them…” – St. Augustine pic.twitter.com/KgXjhckk0C

— Msgr Brian Bransfield (@BrianBransfield) March 31, 2019

The response was similar among the North’s leadership. Conyngham includes letters from Union Gens. George B. McClellan, George Meade and Philip Sheridan, all thanking the sisters for their intercession. Gen. Ambrose Burnside offered the highest praise, saying that his words could never describe the gratitude his men felt for the sisters’ deeds. “Of the Sisters of Mercy there is little need for me to speak,” he wrote. “Their good deeds are written in the grateful hearts of thousands of our soldiers, to whom they were ministering angels.”

Officers wrote personal commendations of the sisters. John E. Michener, a Union soldier captured in the summer of 1864, in a letter thanked the Sisters of Mercy at the Confederate hospital in Charleston, S.C., for bravely administering to men dying of yellow fever—even when Confederate officers were “too much alarmed to even furnish water for the sick and dying.” He added, “I know full well, that but for your untiring devotion to our helpless and unfortunate officers and soldiers, thousands to-day would have been sleeping the sleep that knows no waking.”

In one typical episode at a Kentucky hospital served by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, a Protestant chaplain witnessed a nun serve the sick without rest from daybreak until well past sunset. “It is as mystery to me, how those sisters can stand at their post without ever giving up,” he told a friend. Then, turning to the sister, he asked, “How do you account for it?” The nun only smiled at him and gestured to the rosary on her hip.

Read it all.

In a time of anti-Catholicism, nuns somehow became a unifying force on the battlefield, writes @NicXTempore https://t.co/a7Vk66HLzH via @WSJ

— John J. Miller (@heymiller) April 26, 2019

The silence: deafening. Broken only by an excruciating groan from the protesting joints of a wooden chair as one of those seated shifts their weight.

No one speaks. But volumes are communicated as ashamed, bloodshot and guilt-ridden eyes meet across the room and quickly withdraw.

Suddenly, a familiar voice, clear and strong, declares, “Peace be with you.”

As if the roof were ripped off the house and the noon day sun flooded the room so their hearts were engulfed in joy.

In one glorious moment their inconsolable sorrow was unexpectantly turned to inexpressible exultation.

Read it all.

For this first #ArtWednesday after #Easter, we’ll look at art inspired by Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances. (Rembrandt, The Incredulity of St Thomas, 1634) #Resurrection #PostResurrectionAppearances #EasterWeek #Rembrandt pic.twitter.com/XEZnW0NGzZ

— Russ Ramsey (@russramsey) April 4, 2018

Zaharan Hashim, a radical Muslim preacher accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, never hid his hatred.

He railed against a local performance in which Muslim girls dared to dance. When a Muslim politician held a 50th birthday party, he raged about how Western infidel traditions were poisoning his hometown, Kattankudy.

There were, Mr. Zaharan said in one of his online sermons, three types of people: Muslims, those who had reached an accord with Muslims, and “people who need to be killed.”

Idolaters, he added, “need to be slaughtered wherever you see them.”

Mr. Zaharan has been described by Sri Lankan officials as having founded an obscure group with inchoate aims: a defacement of a Buddha statue, a diatribe against Sufi mystics.

Read it all.

A radical preacher accused of masterminding the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka never hid his hatred. “We all underestimated him. We never thought he would do what he said.” https://t.co/kylj6Gk25C

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 26, 2019

As the disciples preached in the earliest Christian sermons, “This Jesus God has raised up, of whom we are all witnesses . . . . Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” [Acts 2:32,36].

The Resurrection was not a dawning awareness of Christ’s continuing presence among the disciples, it was the literal, physical raising of Jesus’ body from the dead. The Church is founded upon the resurrected Lord, who appeared among His disciples and was seen by hundreds of others.

The Church does not have mere permission to celebrate the Resurrection, it has a mandate to proclaim the truth that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrected Lord gave the Church a sacred commission to take the gospel throughout the world. As Paul made clear, the resurrection of Christ also comes as a comfort to the believer, for His defeat of death is a foretaste and promise of our own resurrection by His power. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” [1 Corinthians 15:53].

So, as the Church gathers to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we should look backward in thankfulness to that empty tomb and forward to the fulfillment of Christ’s promises in us. For Resurrection Day is not merely a celebration”“it is truly preparation as well. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the promise of our resurrection from the dead, and of Christ’s total victory over sin and death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the very center of the Christian gospel. The empty tomb is full of power.

Read it all.

Happy Easter! Here we see Christ at Emmaus by Rembrandt, 1654 (The Rembrandt House Museum collection) #EasterSunday pic.twitter.com/nTklVUO9qK

— Museum Rembrandthuis (@Rembrandthuis) March 27, 2016

In Britain, Christianity is merely being disappeared — from the police arresting an elderly African street preacher for ‘breach of the peace’ in London this year (his cry of ‘Don’t take my Bible!’ as a pair of strapping plods handcuffed him was heartrending) to our refusal to give sanctuary to Asia Bibi lest it upset certain Christian-hating ‘communities’.

In France, already the usual suspects are suggesting that the new Notre Dame should have ‘multi-faith’ elements — minarets, to be specific — which I’ll be up for the day I see a new multi-faith mosque.

It would be a shame for all of us if we lost the values of the Reformation — ironically, it would be worst for those who are currently cheerleading for the rise of other more repressive religions.

At the service I went to on Easter Sunday, there was no mention by the vicar of the massacre in Sri Lanka, which made me dislike that turn-the-other-cheek thing even more. But I’ll keep going back, because the churches will go from us if we don’t go to them. And what comes after them will not be better.

Read it all.

Our churches aren’t perfect, but if we lose them we will all be worse off @spectator https://t.co/hAmUNVm3V4 pic.twitter.com/TYSBhTEGiI

— National Churches Trust (@NatChurchTrust) April 26, 2019

I’m a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, and I believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. So do dozens of my colleagues. How can this be?….

Today’s widespread materialist view that events contrary to the laws of science just can’t happen is a metaphysical doctrine, not a scientific fact. What’s more, the doctrine that the laws of nature are “inviolable” is not necessary for science to function. Science offers natural explanations of natural events. It has no power or need to assert that only natural events happen.

So if science is not able to adjudicate whether Jesus’ resurrection happened or not, are we completely unable to assess the plausibility of the claim? No. Contrary to increasingly popular opinion, science is not our only means for accessing truth. In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, we must consider the historical evidence, and the historical evidence for the resurrection is as good as for almost any event of ancient history. The extraordinary character of the event, and its significance, provide a unique context, and ancient history is necessarily hard to establish. But a bare presumption that science has shown the resurrection to be impossible is an intellectual cop-out. Science shows no such thing.

Hypothesis 3: I was brainwashed as a child. If you’ve read this far and you are still wondering how an MIT professor could seriously believe in the resurrection, you might guess I was brainwashed to believe it as a child. But no, I did not grow up in a home where I was taught to believe in the resurrection. I came to faith in Jesus when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University and was baptized in the chapel of Kings College on my 20th birthday. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are as compelling to me now as then.

Read it all.

In a state of alarm and fright,they thought they were seeing a ghost.But he said,’Why are you so agitated,and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?Look at my hands and feet;yes,it is I indeed.Touch me and see for yourselves;a ghost has no flesh& bones as you can see I have. pic.twitter.com/fQrnw2yJPj

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 25, 2019

Lyrics:

O Radiant Dawn, O Radiant Dawn, O Radiant Dawn
Splendour of Eternal Light
Sun of Justice, Sun of Justice, Sun of Justice
Come, come, come, come, come,
come shine on those who dwell in darkness And the shadow of death

Isaiah had prophesied,
‘The people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light.
Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone’

O Radiant Dawn, O Radiant Dawn, O Radiant Dawn
Splendour of Eternal Light
Sun of Justice, Sun of Justice, Sun of Justice
Come, come, come, come, come,
come shine on those who dwell in darkness And the shadow of death

Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen

Unveiling its new strategy yesterday, Tim Miller, the Commission’s executive director, said its partnership with Public Health England would be critical in developing effective health messages: “We expect consumers to get more information about potential risks.

“We have a moment here to bring gambling harms out of the shadows. So many people I have spoken to feel there is a stigma that isn’t attached to other forms of addiction.”

New gamblers will be expected automatically to be offered the chance to set pre-agreed limits on the amount of time or money they spend. The Commission wants more “self-exclusion” schemes where gamblers have their accounts blocked once they spend a certain amount or want to stop.

The Commission is demanding the industry do more to identify and help vulnerable gamblers before they develop an addiction.

Read it all.

Gambling machines and websites to carry alcohol-style health warnings in new ‘public health’ approach https://t.co/mc6ejdAd5D

— Sally Gainsbury (@DrSalGainsbury) April 25, 2019

Lord Jesus, risen from the dead and alive for evermore: Stand in our midst [this day]…as in the upper room; show us thy hands and thy side; speak thy peace to our hearts and minds; and send us forth into the world as thy witnesses; for the glory of thy name.

–The Rev. John R. W. Stott

Luke 24:13-35
Then they said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?’
… pic.twitter.com/i2Fj1PrgDm

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 24, 2019

Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is thy victory?
O death, where is thy sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

–1 Corinthians 15:51-58

Christ himself pointed out the benefit of his sufferings and resurrection when he said to the women in Mt 28, 10 – “Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me.” These are the very first words they heard from Christ after his resurrection from the dead, by which he confirmed all the former utterances and loving deeds he showed them, namely, that his resurrection avails in our behalf who believe, so that he therefore anticipates and calls Christians his brethren, who believe it, and yet they do not, like the apostles, witness his resurrection.

The risen Christ waits not until we ask or call on him to become his brethren. Do we here speak of merit, by which we deserve anything? What did the apostles merit? Peter denied his Lord three times; the other disciples all fled from him; they tarried with him like a rabbit does with its young. He should have called them deserters, yea, betrayers, reprobates, anything but brethren. Therefore this word is sent to them through the women out of pure grace and mercy, as the apostles at the time keenly experienced, and we experience also, when we are mired fast in our sins, temptations and condemnation.

These are words full of all comfort that Christ receives desperate villains as you and I are and calls us his brethren. Is Christ really our brother, then I would like to know what we can be in need of? Just as it is among natural brothers, so is it also here. Brothers according to the flesh enjoy the same possessions, have the same father, the one inheritance, otherwise they would not be brothers: so we enjoy with Christ the same possessions, and have in common with him one Father and one inheritance, which never decreases by being distributed, as other inheritances do; but it ever grows larger and larger; for it is a spiritual inheritance. But an earthly inheritance decreases when distributed among many persons. He who has a part of this spiritual inheritance, has it all.

Read it all.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

We wish you a joyful #Easter. pic.twitter.com/QKjRNujys4

— St Paul’s Cathedral (@StPaulsLondon) April 1, 2018

Read it all.

The Latest Edition of the Diocese of #SouthCarolina Enewsletter https://t.co/7nkadTzPup #parishministry #lowcountrylife #anglican #churchgrowth #theology pic.twitter.com/5rpg9FSyDT

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 25, 2019

Listen to it all.

I dug around and found a high quality version of Mary Magdalene and the “Gardener” (aka, Jesus in an AWESOME hat) by Rembrandt so that you didn’t have to. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/oBsk3yVbLE

— Karina Tabone (@Illustr_Prayer) April 24, 2019

This takes us to the heart of John’s extraordinary Easter message. The thing John celebrates in the resurrection and imminent ascension of the Lord Jesus is the restoration, and the transformation, of relationships. In this case, it’s his relationship with Mary: as he speaks her name and she replies, ‘Dear Rabbi’, their relationship is restored; as he then commissions her to be what the Orthodox Church calls the apostle to the apostles, taking the good news of the resurrection to the other disciples, their relationship is transformed.

And it’s clear from the errand entrusted to Mary that Jesus’ relationships with those other disciples are also about to be restored and transformed. The Lord tells her, ‘Go to my brothers’. Do you know that’s the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has referred to them that way? Previously, Jesus has called them his servants, and even his friends. But his death and resurrection have so restored and transformed relationships that he now refers to his disciples as his brothers. Again, Jesus has spoken often in this gospel of ‘the Father’ and even of ‘my Father’. ‘My Father and I are one’ he said, ‘My Father is still working and I am working’. ‘I have come in my Father’s name’. But right here is the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has referred to God as ‘your Father’. Again, until this moment Jesus has never spoken of the Father as ‘your God’. But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, relationships are not just restored, but transformed: Jesus’ God becomes ‘our God’, his Father becomes ‘our Father’.

And sure enough in the rest of the gospel we will see Jesus’ relationships with his brothers restored and transformed: restored, as he invites sceptical Thomas to see and even to touch his wounds; and transformed as he then commissions him, with the other disciples, in those words ‘As the Father sent me so I send you’; restored, as he gently asks Peter, three times over, ‘Do you love me?’ (once for each denial); and transformed as he then commissions him, equally gently, to feed his sheep (once for each denial).

I must stop. You know, if it wasn’t for the first Easter Day, no one would ever have dreamed of celebrating the Christmas. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s resurrection, there’s no way we’d celebrate his nativity.

So why celebrate the resurrection? According to John, it’s because in and it through it, we become brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus; in it and through it, we find that Jesus’ God is our God, his Father is our Father. In it and through it, our relationships with the Living God are first restored and then transformed, as we first hear the Risen Lord calling us by name, and then hear him commissioning us to share the good news with others.

Read it all.

@PeteWilcox1564 in the day of his installation as the 8th #BishopOfSheffield pic.twitter.com/0bskA08UDX

— DioceseofSheffield (@DioceseofSheff) September 23, 2017

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Bursting with life pic.twitter.com/jmw7YbliSR

— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) April 24, 2019

First, the “nones” are certainly not a new group of unbelievers exiting the pews of our nation’s churches. They are merely a group who are identifying more accurately what they have always been, those without any real religious practice.

Dr. Ed Stetzer, who holds the distinguished Billy Graham Chair of Church, Missions, and Evangelism at Wheaton College, has given one of the best clarifying explanations of the nones that I’ve seen. In USA Today, he wrote that “Christianity isn’t collapsing, it’s being clarified.”

He is precisely right. He further explains, “Nominal Christians are becoming the nones and convictional Christians remain committed.” This is the precise secret to understanding what’s going on. Weak Christianity is getting weaker and robust, and orthodox Christianity is getting stronger in terms of adherents, if not by theological maturity.

The nones are simply those who until recently would have identified with a Christian denomination just because that’s what their family has always been. But their pastors know they are just CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). Beyond that, it’s crickets attendance-wise. Even though most are inactive, many do hold some cold-to-lukewarm Christian beliefs in the back of their minds. According to Pew, almost a third say that religion is indeed important to them. So the nones are not some new and growing crowd of atheists, agnostics, or unbelievers.

Other leading sociologists of religion report the same thing. Rodney Stark of Baylor University, one of the world’s leading and most distinguished scholars in this field, gives the same explanation in his important book, “The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious Than Ever”: “Today, when asked their religious preference, instead of saying Methodist or Catholic, now a larger proportion of non-attenders say ‘none,’ by which they most seem to mean ‘no actual membership.’”

Stark gets more precise: “The entire change [toward none-ness] has taken place with the non-attending group.”

Read it all.

thank goodness for someone speaking sense on this subject // No, Non-Believers Are Not Increasing In America https://t.co/cBYPH0TdOY @FDRLST

— Thomas S. Kidd (@ThomasSKidd) April 24, 2019

50 years ago, the world was looking towards space – waiting for the first moon landing.”

At the time, US President Richard Nixon described it as ‘the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation!’ The great preacher Billy Graham quickly corrected him – saying that far greater was the week of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

If you were alive in 1969 you would remember exactly where you were when Neil Armstrong took that first ‘small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind.’ Although none of us were there when Jesus lived and died – his resurrection was so significant that we remember and celebrate it every year and will continue to do so until he returns.

The resurrection of Jesus guarantees that no matter how far we have strayed, there is a way for us to be friends with God – and live with him forever.

Although none of us were there when Jesus lived and died – his resurrection was so significant that we remember and celebrate it every year and will continue to do so until he returns.

Happy Resurrection Day – Happy Easter.

#Easter Prayer ‘Almighty God, Who art worshipped by the heavenly host w hymns that R nvr silent+thnksgvngs tht nvr cease: fill our mths wh Thy praise tht we may worthily magnify Thy holy Name 4 all the wnderfl blssngs of Thy love,+chiefly.4 the Resurrectn’ https://t.co/RKUtyfr6oA pic.twitter.com/Q5fgbwKVnQ

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 24, 2019

If there’s anything Catholics in the United States should have learned over the past two decades, it’s that order—in the world, the republic, and the Church—is a fragile thing. And by “order,” I don’t mean the same old same old. Rather, I mean the dynamic development of world politics, our national life, and the Church within stable reference points that guide us into the future.

Many of those reference points seem to have come unstuck, and that’s why we’re experiencing an unusual amount of air turbulence these days….Those who don’t remember the two decades immediately after Vatican II and haven’t taken the trouble to learn that history are understandably upset by the fragility of order in the Church today. But they should also understand that this is not 1968, or 1978, or even 1988, and that a lot of ballast was put into the Barque of Peter during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. For all the challenges it faces, and despite the determination of some to revisit what they regard as the glorious Seventies, the Church in the U.S. is in far, far better condition to withstand the air turbulence of the moment than it was forty years ago. And that’s because truth, spoken winsomely and in charity, but without fudging, has proven a powerful instrument of evangelization and spiritual growth in a culture wallowing in various confusions.

At the bottom of the bottom line is the Resurrection. It’s entirely possible to hold fast to the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was raised by God to a new form of bodily life after his crucifixion and be deeply concerned about the state of the Church today. But it’s not possible to know the Risen Lord and to indulge in despair. Despair died on the cross and unshakeable hope was born at Easter. That’s why Easter faith is the surest anchor for all of us in turbulent times.

Read it all.

Stained glass detail from Chartres Cathedral illustrating today's Gospel of Emmaus: "Then, starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself." (Luke 24:27) https://t.co/CgOQt1XzBK

— Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. (@LawrenceOP) April 24, 2019

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, that as we joyfully celebrate the mysteries of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, so at His coming we may rejoice before Thee with all Thy saints; through the love of Him Who died for us and rose again.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

25 April 2019
Easter Thursday

Christ Appears to the Apostles Peter and Paul
Giovanni Battista Crespi, 23.12.1573 – 23.12.1632
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna pic.twitter.com/MOyoaEDn7b

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 25, 2019

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish. Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith for ever…

–Psalm 146:1-3

Today that question, that debate—Did Jesus really rise from the dead historically, bodily?—is not as prominent or as intense because, at one level, people feel that it doesn’t matter to them, because different people believe in different things, and maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t; and if it did, or didn’t, and that helps you get along in life, fine; but it doesn’t make much difference to me. I may or may not call myself a Christian, and if the resurrection seems helpful to me, I may believe it; and if it doesn’t, then I won’t, and I don’t think any body should tell me that I have to.

Behind those two different kinds of unbelief–the kind from 40 years ago and the kind from the present day–is a different set of assumptions. For example, in my college days the assumption pretty much still held sway, though it was starting to give way with the rise of existentialism, that there are fixed, closed natural laws, that make the world understandable and scientifically manageable, and these laws do not allow the truth of the claim that someone has risen from the dead to live forever. That was a commonly held assumption: The modern world with its scientific understanding of natural laws does not allow for resurrections. So unbelief was often rooted in that kind of assumption.

But today, that’s not the most common working assumption. Today the assumption is not that there are natural laws outside of me forbidding the resurrection of Jesus, but there is a personal law inside of me that says: I don’t have to adapt my life to anything I don’t find helpful. Or you could state it another way: Truth for me is what I find acceptable and helpful.

Read it all.

#Easter Day @HFDCathedral: 1000 #Eucharist with #Langlais‘ spectacular Messe Solennelle & #Taverner‘s Dum transisset; 1130 #Matins (#Stanford in C, #Byrd, #Guilmant); 1530 #Evensong (#Dyson in D, #Wesley Blessed be the God and Father; #Widor) All welcome pic.twitter.com/W9HYuPnTEJ

— Peter Dyke (@peterdyke49) April 21, 2019

You can listen directly here or download it there.

Jeffrey Miller’s 2019 #Easter #Sermon: Nothing will ever be the Same Again https://t.co/5kFA4J3Hl4 #easter2019 #theology #scripture #eschatology #southcarolina #parishministry #lowcountrylife pic.twitter.com/Gnsl9vuWwk

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 24, 2019

In the study on empathy and political orientation, researchers from the University of Toronto, University of Calgary and the University of Texas, San Antonio, analyzed data from the 2004 General Social Survey.

They found that self-identified political conservatives scored lower on measures of empathy than self-identified political liberals.

But those differences disappeared as conservatives reported higher levels of belief in a loving, supportive God engaged in their lives, or prayed frequently or were regular worship attenders.

“These patterns suggest that religious institutions and the beliefs and practices they socialize might provide multiple pathways to bolster social‐psychological processes like empathy,” researchers said.

In the other study, researchers from Texas A&M and the University of Minnesota analyzed data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey to determine five basic conceptions Americans have of God, from the divine as a non-entity to a loving God concerned with human beings.

The largest group consisted of those who viewed God as a loving, nonjudgmental deity who is engaged with humanity. The next two largest groups were those who perceived God as a loving deity who is neither judgmental nor engaged with humanity and those who viewed God as loving, engaged and judgmental.

What did not gain much traction is the idea of God as punishing and judgmental.

“We find little evidence that respondents perceived God to be only an angry entity,” researchers reported. “Instead, much of the variation among the three classes that imply a robust God revolves around how God’s tendencies toward judgment and engagement with humanity intersect with love.”

Read it all.

Are evangelicals, even those who identify as politically conservative, that much different from everyone else?

New research calls into question the stereotypes of the cold-blooded religious conservative and the bleeding-heart liberal.

— theARDA.com (@ReligionData) April 23, 2019

Here is a #prayer from the Church of England. You can access text and audio versions through our website: https://t.co/YJiygMjBLN pic.twitter.com/9XqtSyuolO

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) April 24, 2019

All year, death, after death, after death.
Then today look how majestically clouds float in the sky

–Barbara Ras (1949- )

@VictoriaWJHL just a few beautiful clouds from today pic.twitter.com/TEyPr1X1bA

— Robert Moody (@RobertM54764396) April 23, 2019

From here:

“The heart of the earth has accepted and received the Son of God; and it is from a womb so consecrated, this womb of the ‘hellish’ depths of human existence, that the saved creature rises up. Not just (not even temporarily) in the Son alone. It is not that he alone descended and so rose again as victor because death could not hold him captive. ‘Even now’ he is not the firstborn among the dead in the sense that he is even now the only human being to have found the complete fulfillment of his whole human reality. . . . the Son of Man ‘cannot’ have risen alone. What, we may ask, is really to be understood by his glorified bodily condition (if we take it seriously, and don’t spiritualize it into another way of talking about his eternal ‘communion with God’) right up to the ‘Last Day’, if meanwhile it should persist all by itself—something which is precisely unthinkable for the bodily condition (though glorified)? So when we find in Mt 27:52 s. that other bodies too, those of saints, rose up with him (indeed even ‘appeared’—as he himself did—to show that the end of the ages has already come upon us), this is merely positive evidence from Scripture for what we would have expected anyway, if definitive salvation has already been unshakably founded, death conquered, and a man, for whom it is never good to be alone, has entered upon the fulfillment of his whole being. Hence to try to set aside this testimony from Matthew as a ‘mythological’ intrusion, or to argue away its eschatological meaning with ingenious evasions—such as that it is merely a matter of a temporary resurrection or even of ‘phantom bodies’—would not be in accord with the authoritative voice of Scripture. It is a fact that by far the greater part of the Fathers and the theologians, right up to the present day, have firmly maintained the eschatological interpretation of the text as the only one possible from the exegetical point of view.”

24 April 2019
Easter Wednesday pic.twitter.com/GXWnK1SUKU

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 24, 2019

I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the first Easter Sunday. And I do not see that as any sort of parable or metaphor. This is, frankly, the very heart of my faith. Also, I do not believe that we can or should reduce the great mystery of the resurrection to an experience that occurred within the community. This is what some contemporary theologians have posited: that Christ “rose” within the community. Theological approaches differ, but, in essence, some theologians offer the story of how, as the disciples came to reflect on the life and death of Jesus Christ, he became “present” to them in a new way, through the Spirit. This, in turn, empowered them to proclaim the good news of his Gospel. Some theologians offer this as a more credible or contemporary way of understanding the “resurrection.”

But there is a problem with this idea of the resurrection as the after-effects of a “shared memory.” Certainly, after the resurrection and the ascension the disciples would have “remembered” Jesus, and certainly they may have had powerful Spirit-filled experiences as they did so, often as they gathered in community. But, to my mind, only something as vivid, dramatic and, in a word, real as the multiple appearances by the risen Christ could have moved the disciples from abject fear (cowering behind closed doors) to being willing to give their lives for Jesus. Nothing else can credibly account for the transformation of terrified disciples into willing martyrs.

Moreover, for the disciples to have somehow found a body in the tomb would indeed mean that Jesus did not rise from the dead, which would negate the message of Easter. The tomb, as the Easter narratives recount, was empty—something that initially filled the disciples with fear and confusion.

Read it all.

The ‘literal flesh-and-blood’ resurrection is the heart of my faith https://t.co/jvdDw3LjhT

— America Magazine (@americamag) April 23, 2019