and other pursuits of religion in America
Baptists from around the nation are gathering in Birmingham for two meetings this month. Southern Baptists will convene here June 9 - 12. Cooperative Baptists follow June 17 - 21. Attendees will spend much of their time inside the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center. But if they have time to explore the streets of downtown Birmingham, …
Continue reading Baptist Historical Sites in Downtown Birmingham
"The days of our age are threescore years and ten." -- Psalm 90:10 (BCP) St. Paul's Episcopal Church on 34th Street in downtown Newport News, Virginia, is closing. (See announcement's on the church's Facebook page, and articles in the Daily Press on April 21, and May 12, and on WAVY on May 14. The final …
Continue reading St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Closing after almost Seven Score Years
Few things seem to me more expressive of twentieth-century Southern Baptist spirit than the focus on large numbers on the 1984 monument erected on the site where the Southern Baptist Convention was organized in 1845. Memorial tablet in front of 1902 building of First Baptist Church, Augusta, Georgia.April, 27, 2019 In 1983 the denomination reported36,531 …
On Thursday, the Vatican announced the appointment of the first African American as archbishop of Washington, Wilton Gregory. For the past fourteen years he has been archbishop of Atlanta. In its report on Gregory's appointment, the Washington Post noted that while nationally African Americans only make up 3% of the Roman Catholic Church, in the …
Continue reading D.C.’s New Archbishop and One of Its Historic African American Churches
Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association concerning the forty-foot tall the Peace Cross at a traffic junction in Bladensburg, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Peace Cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, 2009.Ben Jacobson (Kranar Drogin) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D The cross is a memorial to American solders who died in World War I. It …
"The site of the Washington Hilton, where the National Prayer Breakfast has been held for at least the last three decades, was almost the home not of a hotel, but a of church.
Walking along Highland Avenue in Birmingham, Alabama, yesterday I saw this sign. It is located in front of the parking lot of Temple Beth-el. The "wall" is actually a brick and iron fence installed as part of an effort to beautify the synagogue's street front. There are no gates on the driveways that lead across into …
Continue reading President’s Wall – A Fence with an Open Gate
In the summer of 2017, the Center for Worship and the Arts at Samford University produced a nine-minute video on understanding church architecture. It was used in Animate, their week-long summer program for teenagers and others. I provided the narration.
