Browsing: Religion

Students learned cultural and religious respect as they gathered for Iftar on Friday evening in Cashion Lobby. Organized by Intercultural Engagement and the Center for Global Engagement, students broke their fast as per the customs of Ramadan.

Suffering is something that people aim to avoid at all costs, seeking the easy, comfortable life instead. However, suffering can be a beautiful, purifying thing, unveiling our desire for something deeper and drawing us into a beautiful intimacy with Christ.

It is not uncommon to hear someone say, half-laughing, that they didn’t even last a week. The remark is meant to be humorous, but it reveals something deeper. Failure in Lent has become social embarrassment rather than spiritual reflection. Success has become a badge of religious credibility. The language of repentance has been replaced by the language of achievement.

I think sometimes God plants a desire in your heart long before you understand why. And sometimes the place you try to talk yourself out of is the very place you were meant to be.

The object of this article is not to scrutinize your personal upbringing, family or church; however, if your own questions were routinely shut down and reframed as a “lack of faith,” you might consider the uncomfortable reality that you were indoctrinated into your beliefs.

Despite the ideology that our culture and world have created, slow can be the most transformative and impactful speed at which to live our lives. Slowing down in a world of hurry and busyness allows you to truly see the plan God has for you.

“In a way, it’s not a typical service where you have a straightforward worship leader and somebody guiding the entire service,” Wylie sophomore Aaron Cash said. “We do have structure to kind of just keep us going, but really it’s a space for people to come and worship together and to bring their own songs.”

“The best vision of it would be to think about a house in Hogwarts,” Aughtry said. “It is a way of designating students who are studying at a multi-denominational seminary such as Truett, but who belong to a particular denomination or tradition, such as Methodism, or in this case, broadly Anglicanism.”

What began as a night of worship turned into a moment of calling. Students thought they were just attending weekly worship at Vertical, but they found themselves face to face with University Chaplain Dr. Charles Ramsey and Compassion International Representative Meghan Foley as they introduced the Beyond Us Missions Conference — a week dedicated to reminding students that faith and good works don’t stop at Vertical chapel.

Both Flavin and Van Gorder sketched an invitation and a warning. The real test isn’t in the heat of headlines, but in the quieter spaces — dinner tables, living rooms, classrooms and pews — where people chose to alienate or to listen. The health of democracy and national change, they argue, will be decided in those very regular, small acts of civility and grace.

At the edge of a black hole, we will drag ourselves into a pit that we or our mockeries of creation will not escape. We will have given consciousness to something that cannot think, eyes to a being that will never truly see and a mouth to something that will never be able to scream.

“We want to create opportunities, experiences and [an] atmosphere where you can ask where you are in your faith journey,” Ramsey said. “We want you to ask the big questions and to explore faith [and] move at your own pace, but you can’t do it alone. You’re going to [need] community; It’s vital for your journey.”

Sometimes people approach faith like it’s a competition. A verse or passage is read, and instead of seeking to understand it, the focus shifts to proving who is right. When the rush to be right takes over, conversations that could be moments of learning or reflection turn into debates about who can quote Scripture the fastest or defend their interpretation the strongest.

Truett Seminary, the University Libraries and the College of Engineering and Computer Science will be hosting “AI and The Church” conference on Monday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The conference will feature five presentations over topics related to AI and its application to seminary as well as a panel Q&A. According to the event’s schedule, each speaker will present for an hour followed by a 15 minute break.

I was so terrified of the answers to my questions that I simply stopped asking. How could the Church love gay people but hate that they were gay? Why did the same people who quoted Exodus and Deuteronomy refer to other human beings as “illegals”? Was I actually going to go to hell because my family went to church on Sunday instead of Saturday? If God was good, why was I so alone?

Hallow app founder Alex Jones left the Catholic Church in high school but told The Pillar, a Catholic news publication, that he returned to the Church after college through meditative and contemplative techniques. In April 2021, venture capital group General Catalyst poured $12 million into his idea for a Catholic version of the secular meditation apps he enjoyed in his early adulthood.

What’s beautiful is that you don’t need the aesthetic to be Christian. I have been to churches with beautiful stained-glass walls, and I’ve been to churches with no walls at all. I’ve experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit in a small worship service with less than a dozen people singing in a dialect I barely understand, and I have experienced the Holy Spirit in a gathering of hundreds.