The Weekend Wanderer: 27 July 2024

“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like. Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within these articles but have found them thought-provoking.

---

“‘I Talk to God in Public’: An Interview with Public Theologian Esau McCaulley” – Joel J. Miller in Miller’s Book Review: “One reason I decided on my classic memoir goal for 2024 was reading several excellent memoirs and biographies last year. One of those? Esau McCaulley’s How Far to the Promised Land. I had followed McCaulley’s work for a while by then and raced to buy, read, and review it the minute it came out. I was not disappointed; you can read my review here. McCaulley is the Jonathan Blanchard Associate Professor of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College. Along with How Far to the Promised Land, he’s the author of several books, including Reading While Black; Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance; Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal; and a forthcoming book from Yale University Press, How to Read the Book that Sets You Free: The Bible, Slavery, and Abolition. A sought-after lecturer, McCaulley was a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2022. The Alabama State Senate has recognized him with a special commendation ‘for his influential work and achievements in the faith community.’ Plus, he’s a regular contributor at the New York Times and has written for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and Christianity Today. I was excited to talk with McCaulley about education, censorship, and writing about faith for a mainstream audience.”

---

“7 Easy Tips for Personal Prayer” – Fr. Ronald Rolheiser at Practicing the Way: “01 — Show Up. There’s no bad way to pray and no single starting point for prayer. The spiritual masters offer one nonnegotiable rule: you have to show up for prayer and show up regularly. Everything else is negotiable and respects your unique circumstances. Most days, we don’t pray simply because we don’t quite get around to it. Perhaps the best metaphor to describe our hurried and distracted lives is that of a car wash. For most of us, that’s just what our typical day does to us—it sucks us through. Prayer is truly a discipline. Show up!

02 — Quiet Your Heart. Solitude is a form of awareness, a way of being present and perceptive within all of life. It’s having a dimension of reflectiveness in our daily lives that brings gratitude, appreciation, peacefulness, enjoyment, and prayer. It’s the sense, within ordinary life, that life is precious, sacred, and enough. Solitude isn’t something we turn on like a water faucet. It needs a body and mind slowed enough to be attentive to the present moment. The first step is to remain quietly in God’s presence in solitude, silence, and prayer. If it is your first time doing this, set aside 15 minutes for prayer.”

---

“As a scholar, he’s charted the decline in religion. Now the church he pastors is closing its doors” – Peter Smith in AP News: “They plan to gather one last time on Sunday — the handful of mostly elderly members of First Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. They’ll say the Lord’s Prayer, recite the Apostle’s Creed and hear a biblical passage typically used at funerals, ‘To everything there is a season … a time to be born, and a time to die.’ They’ll sing classic hymns — ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘It Is Well With My Soul’ and, poignantly, ‘God Be With You Till We Meet Again.’ Afterward, members are scheduled to vote to close the church, a century and a half after it was created by hardscrabble farmers in this southern Illinois community of about 14,000 people. Many U.S. churches close their doors each year, typically with little attention. But this closure has a poignant twist. First Baptist’s pastor, Ryan Burge, spends much of his time as a researcher documenting the dramatic decline in religious affiliation in recent decades. His recent book, The Nones, talks about the estimated 30% of American adults who identify with no religious tradition. He uses his research in part to help other pastors seeking to reach their communities, and he’s often invited to fly around the country and speak to audiences much larger than his weekly congregation.”

---

“4 churches connected to Civil Rights Movement could make UNESCO World Heritage List” – Leonard Blair at The Christian Post: “Four churches in Alabama and Georgia are among 11 national Civil Rights Movement sites that the U.S. government could nominate for inclusion on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List. The U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced Tuesday that the National Park Service was authorized to prepare potential nominations for Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia; 16th Street Baptist Church and Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama; and Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Other Civil Rights Movement sites being considered for nomination are the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Anniston, Alabama; Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas; Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas; the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home in Jackson, Mississippi; the Robert Russa Moton High School/Museum in Farmville, Virginia; and the Lincoln Memorial and Grounds in Washington, D.C.”

---

“Staying Grounded Through Sexual Trauma” – Tolu Osemwegie, Kelly Erickson, and Joan Ifarinde on Grounded Podcast: “Tolu, Kelly, and Joan discuss how sexual trauma can effect the everyday and how to stay grounded through it. Today we’ll be talking about a sensitive topic, about sexual abuse and different ways it affects us as individuals, how it shows up in the community, and ways that we can stay grounded on a daily basis if this is part of our experience.”

---

“‘It is our destiny’: Meet the people who rebuilt Notre Dame” – Agnès Poirier in The Guardian: “The yellow-brown plumes of smoke coiling upwards filled my entire kitchen window. A few moments earlier the sky had been bright blue. I rushed down the stairs on to Quai de la Tournelle. Everything was still and eerily silent: passersby looked stunned, rooted to the ground; cars had stopped in the middle of the road, the passengers immobile, all looking across the Seine. I followed their gaze. Notre Dame was burning. Huge red and orange tongues of fire were leaping from its roof; we could hear its 12th-century wood cracking loudly. I will always remember that sound: the sound of history wailing. As the cathedral burned, the president, Emmanuel Macron, the leaders of the Senate and the National Assembly, the whole government, rushed to Notre Dame’s side. At 9.30pm, Macron authorised the daredevil attempt by 150 firefighters to save the cathedral by attacking the fire from inside the north belfry. Never was the Paris firefighters’ motto, Sauver ou Périr (To Save or To Die), truer than on the night of 15 April 2019. As Jean-Claude Gallet, a three-star general and commander of the Paris fire brigade, told me: ‘The situation was so grave, audacity was the only option.'”

---

Music: Porter’s Gate (featuring DOE, IAmSon, Paul Zach), “Always With Me,” from Sanctuary Songs.