Homeless find safe parking in church lots
Homeless people living in their cars are finding a welcome at supervised church and public parking lots, according to a Washington Post article by Kimberly Winston.
Winston cites Lake Washington United Methodist Church in Kirkland, Wash., as one of the locations where homeless women and single mothers with children can park overnight. She quotes Karina O’Malley, the safe-parking coordinator at Lake Washington United Methodist Church: “Our Gospel tells us to welcome the stranger, to take care of the widows and orphans. To me, it is such a gift to the congregation because proximity is the thing that is so desperately needed to awaken our souls and is so hard to get. It just enriches our experience of what needs to be happening in the world.”
The Imperative of Biblical Literacy
Eugene Peterson
Eugene Peterson lectures at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle in May 2009. (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)
While she doesn't allow students to use it her classes, Temple University religion scholar Nyasha Junior is grateful that Eugene Peterson's "The Message" has rekindled interest in biblical literacy. Dr. Junior said in re-examining "The Message," she now sees how Peterson, who died in October at age 85, helped to increase knowledge of the Bible's content through his paraphrased translation.
However, she added in an article, "Eugene Peterson and the Imperative of Biblical Literacy" in Religion & Politics, Peterson's popularizing of Bible content is only one part of what's needed to increase biblical literacy in America.
"While content knowledge is important, biblical literacy also requires a greater degree of understanding regarding translation itself a form of interpretation," Dr. Junior writes. "It is not a mechanical construction of a one-to-one, beginners’ vocabulary list, but a complex process that involves numerous, deliberate choices. Whether it’s Peterson’s work as an individual or that of a multi-year, scholarly translation committee, translation is not neutral—it’s a political act in that it is affected by our interests and because it has real-world consequences."
Church Shopping
Pew: Class divide extends to church shopping
The Pew Research Center's section on Religion and Public Life reports that "about half of American adults (49%) have at some point searched for a new church or congregation." However, whether they're likely to see a new church varies according to their levels of education and income. Some 59 percent, or nearly six in 10, college-educated Americans have looked to change churches, while only 38% of those with a high school education or less. These latest figures come from a new Pew analysis of survey data collected in 2015.