“I know some officers who’ve been ordered by their commanders not to speak to the press, whereas those who have been supportive of the policy are brought out before the press. We have a double standard.” -- R. Crews

Let me try this illustration. You are trying to impress someone, maybe a girl you want to date. However, your mother insists you take your ugly and socially inept cousin along with you…You know that if you don't cut the cords from this cousin you ain't going to get the girl. Of course, if and when you do get the girl your cousin is still your cousin. You can't hide him forever.

The portion where Dr. Butterfield is the most critical (and appropriately so) is where she helps us see where our spiritual formation is too often superficial and how the church frequently allows us to frolic in our biblical immaturity.

We dare not try to cut Christ in pieces, as if we could receive him deliverer from sin's guilt but not from its dominion, or as Savior but not as Lord. Nor can we cut ourselves in pieces, severing our body from our soul—as if we could give our heart to Jesus and keep the title deed to our body. It's precisely because our bodies are too important to the biblical drama that they cannot be exempted from biblical discipleship.

“I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” the atheist said. “I don’t consider it an earthshaking affair, but in this area in particular, we seem to have so many self-righteous religious people, so it just annoys me.”

"Some people are just wired to do this," Lanier told me. "Sometimes it's men who know they're not equipped to work in the church nursery or to sing in the church choir. But if they're like me, they can feel the smile of God as they exercise their tool skills—and because they have a chance to relate one-on-one to someone who maybe never heard the gospel of Jesus before."

According to Kreider, what lies behind this busyness isn't simply ambition and drive; it's also a "dread [of] what they might have to face in its absence." That's because "busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, [and] a hedge against emptiness.It's our way of telling ourselves that our lives "cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless" if we are "in demand every hour of the day."

The new amendment easily passed stating that the dissolution of the ministry of a bishop requires a two-third supermajority for all voting bodies. After the passing of the amendment, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said nothing but appeared stunned.

My own conversion was intellectual. I didn't need a quick spiritual fix. Instead, I encountered a compelling and luminous vision of reality so powerful and attractive that it demanded a response.

There’s so much that’s encouraging, one respondent told the magazine, but he too perceived an “unmistakable climate of suspicion.” You see and feel it in presbytery and General Assembly, he said. Some are sure that the denomination is teetering on the brink of liberalism, while others fear that we’re becoming rigid and sectarian.