By Bill Leonard Those Catholics can do drama, can’t they? Cardinals, 115 of them, all male (still), in their red and lace vestments began the conclave to elect the 266th new pope by chanting a hymn invoking the presence of the…
Dangerous Lent
By Bill Leonard In my Baptist upbringing we didn’t pay much attention to Lent. Ash Wednesday, for example, was just another prayer meeting night. Yet, we did not disregard the classic Christian struggles — repentance, confession, humility, mortality — that…
Vicar of Christ
Vicar of Christ
By Bill Leonard In the year 376, St. Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin (Vulgate), wrote to Pope Damasus: “As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none save your Beatitude, that is, with the chair…
Prayers by the Book
By Bill Leonard In his 1646 work, The Dippers Dipt, Anglican clergyman Daniel Featley published a scathing attack on the “Dippers” rampant in England. “Dipper” was an early name for Baptists and their practice of immersion baptism. Featley denounced such…
Prayers by the Book
By Bill Leonard In his 1646 work, The Dippers Dipt, Anglican clergyman Daniel Featley published a scathing attack on the “Dippers” rampant in England. “Dipper” was an early name for Baptists and their practice of immersion baptism. Featley denounced such…
Bring ye all the tithes into the PayPal
By Bill Leonard On the first Sunday of 2013 we picked up our offering envelopes at First Baptist Church, Highland Avenue in Winston-Salem, N.C. Our pastor encouraged us to do so, noting that some boxes never leave the building. Eschewing…
Bring ye all the tithes into the PayPal
By Bill Leonard On the first Sunday of 2013 we picked up our offering envelopes at First Baptist Church, Highland Avenue in Winston-Salem, N.C. Our pastor encouraged us to do so, noting that some boxes never leave the building. Eschewing…
Idolatry and the AR-15
By Bill Leonard A Dec. 29 headline from Mediaite reads, “Gun Sales Soar Following Newtown as Gun Advocates Rush to Stock Up.” Swamped with orders, one Idaho gun store manager was forced to disconnect his phones, because “We were swamped…
Raising a lament
By Bill Leonard “Summon the wailing women to come. Send for the women skilled in keening to come quickly and raise a lament for us, that our eyes my run with tears and our eyelids be wet with weeping…. Teach…
Rescuing Advent from Christmas
By Bill Leonard In 394 CE the Spanish nun Egeria visited Holy Land sites, participating in the church’s great liturgical moments from Epiphany to Easter. She kept a wonderful diary of her exploits that includes this experience in Bethlehem’s Church…
‘Time was’ won’t hold
By Bill J. Leonard “Time was, when the population of many regions of America was almost entirely religious; it is not so now. Thousands there are, even of those who regularly attend public worship, who have no theology, no family…