“This Is Evil. We Condemn It In The Name Of Christ.” This kind of push-back by religious leaders is all too rare. Let’s celebrate it when it happens:
(RNS) — The president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has called for the excommunication of unrepentant white supremacists in the church’s ranks, rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the conservative Lutheran denomination.
In a letter dated Feb. 21, LCMS President Matthew Harrison said he was “shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views via Twitter and other social media.” He noted far-right members were causing “local disruption” for congregations and alleged that LCMS leadership and deaconesses had fallen victim to online threats, some of which he described as “serious.”
Harrison went on to rebuke the “horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right,’” listing ideologies such as “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide.”
He noted that while the LCMS is “not a top-down institution,” he would work with local pastors and district presidents “to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it.” Citing Scripture, he called on those spewing hateful ideologies to repent.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has hardly been a bastion of progressive thought, which makes this rebuke even more noteworthy.
More Good News For Religious Reawakening? I don’t know. But it sounds promising to me:
For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.
Drawn by posts on TikTok and Instagram, plus old-fashioned word of mouth, Christians from across the country poured through a chapel on the campus of Asbury University to pray and sing until the wee hours of the morning, lining up hours before the doors opened and leaving only when volunteers closed the chapel at 1 a.m. to clean it for the next day.
“It’s like Woodstock,” said Nick Hall, 40, an evangelist from Minnesota who arrived last week to witness the kind of spiritual outpouring that he and others have long prayed for. “This thing that’s happening there is so organic and raw, not flashy, not cool — it’s the anti-cool.”
By any definition, a revival is characterized by spontaneous long-lasting episodes of collective worship: extemporaneous prayer, stirring music and rousing preaching. The concept has a history stretching back to at least the First Great Awakening in 18th-century New England, when crowds of newly fervent Protestants gathered to hear vivid extemporaneous sermons by pastors like Jonathan Edwards.
The campus setting has helped define the revival for many observers as one driven by Generation Z and speaking to their needs.
The Asbury revival is “marked by overwhelming peace for a generation marked by anxiety,” said Madison Pierce, a student at the unaffiliated Asbury Theological Seminary across the street who volunteered to pray with visitors and help with logistics.
“It’s marked by joy for a generation marked by suicidal ideation,” Mr. Pierce said. “It’s marked by humility for a generation traumatized by the abuse of religious power.”
Yet Another Underutilized Tool In Battle Against Climate Change: Capturing, and reusing, excess heat:
Excess heat produced across Europe could almost power the entire region but preventing this waste is largely being ignored as a solution to the energy crisis, say environmental experts.
“The global energy crisis is a wakeup call to stop wasting energy,” said Toby Morgan, senior manager for the built environment at Climate Group, an environmental not-for-profit. “Now, more than ever, we need to make better use of the energy we already produce, we simply can’t afford to let it literally escape out the window. Energy efficiency improvements, like capturing and recycling excess heat, are absolutely critical to lower fossil fuel demand and lower bills.”
A report published this week by the global engineering company Danfoss estimated that in the EU alone, excess heat was equal to 2,860 TWh a year, almost the same as the EU’s total energy demand for heat and hot water.
To rapidly tackle the energy crisis, Vad Mathiesen proposes a heat planning directive that enables local authorities to plan according to local conditions. This would involve mapping existing waste heat sources in greater detail, then proposing thermal networks that distribute heat more effectively and initiatives that improve energy efficiency in buildings.
“Energy efficiency needs to be a top priority for any business or government, particularly during an energy crisis,” said Morgan, who advises every corporate net zero commitment to include a time-bound energy efficiency target, and for governments to incentivise the uptake of energy efficient technologies. “Energy efficiency improvements are climate critical. The time for action is now.”
Cannonball Found! The Lewes Constabulary apparently searched everywhere–except on a nearby sidewalk:
A cannonball from the War of 1812 that went missing from the historic Lewes Cannonball House was found Thursday morning a few blocks away on the sidewalk outside the Zwaanendael Museum.
The Lewes Police Department was notified that the cannonball, which was welded into the foundation of the house on Pilottown Road, was missing on Feb. 17. Despite a Police Department Facebook post with over 500 shares, police had no leads as of Wednesday night, Chief Thomas Spell said.
Zwaanendael employee Devon Filicicchia spotted it on the sidewalk as she went into work Thursday morning. It seemed “intentionally put there for someone to come across,” she said (Ya think?).
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