I will stop here on the subject of penology, but there is more that could be said. Let me just make a couple of final comments. Yes, I do believe in incarceration for some. There really truly are evil people who need to be taken away from society, who make society significantly less safe by […]
The Bible and penology
In the previous post I received a comment about crime being a moral problem. That is absolutely correct with a very important caveat. Crime is a moral problem unless the law itself is immoral. Think about both the Soviet era and Nazi era laws that required citizens to turn in otherwise moral people based on their religion. […]
The penitentiary movement and harm to this culture
As I wrote on my post for 21 May, the original penitentiary movement was meant to do away with cruel and unusual punishment and replace it with a system based on Christian thought and oriented towards rehabilitation. In fact, there are three words that are often found in discussions of our prison system: Rehabilitation — […]
Fr. Paul Moses
About five months ago I wrote a post called, And the Bishop Cried. In it I reported about our bishop’s reaction to the news that one of my fellow priests, The Very Rev. Fr. Paul Moses, had terminal cancer and was expected to last only four months. He actually lasted five and a half months. […]
On prison and Christian thought
Recently someone posted the note below on my post regarding prison and recidivism. However, I forgot to answer it, so here it is in full: Great post. Would that we all would take chances on those in prison. So often we stop after visiting the, if we even do that! I wonder if Orthodox thought […]
On the boy who cried wolf (God) once too often
As you look at the cartoon above, realize that this is the point to which some of our televangelists have brought us. Some of them have the attitude that the Holy Spirit personally informs them of God’s plans. In addition, they cannot resist the desire to one-up those whom they consider to be either liberal […]
The Reformation and popular religiosity
Let me continue on with popular religiosity. The Reformers were reacting against a Church that had gone rogue in some areas. The Radical Reformers (the Anabaptists) reacted so strongly that they threw history away. A fiction was created of a culture-free Christianity which could be recreated if only we cleaned out the supposed cultural elements […]
On us and popular religiosity
When I was a missionary with the Anglican Church, we prided ourselves on having a “rational” faith. Now, rational did not mean that there were no mystical elements to what we believed. Neither did it mean that we had figured out all mysteries. Neither did it mean that we had no traditions, rather we prided […]
On Thanksgiving and popular religiosity
Well, yesterday Father Orthoduckâ„¢ gave a real-life example of the negative side of popular religiosity, that is, he showed how our popular religiosity with regards to ex-cons actually contradicts and goes against both our official religiosity and even what we declare and believe about ourselves as Christians. In fact, when most people think about popular […]
What is popular religiosity?
OK, so what is popular religiosity and why is it important that we know what it is? Well, first let me print a couple of quotes that will help you begin to understand it. You need not read the quotes to understand the posts that will come out after this one. [Warning: the quotes are heavy going.] Today I am […]
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