“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.
“Girls camp grieves loss of 27 campers and counselors in Texas floods that killed more than 80 people” – Jim Vertuno and John Seewer at AP News: “Crews trudged through debris and waded into swollen riverbanks Monday in the search for victims of catastrophic flooding over the July Fourth weekend that killed more 80 people in Texas, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from an all-girls Christian camp. With more rain on the way, the risk of more flooding was still high in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise as crews looked for the many people who were still missing. Operators of Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, said Monday that they lost 27 campers and counselors, confirming their worst fears after a wall of water slammed into cabins built along the edge of the Guadalupe River.”
“Churches can endorse politicians, IRS says in court filing” – Bob Smietana and Jack Jenkins at Religious News Service: “For years, conservative legal groups have argued that an IRS rule barring churches from endorsing candidates was unconstitutional. Now the IRS agrees. In a court filing, the IRS said the-so called Johnson Amendment, which bars all nonprofits from being involved in campaigns, should not apply to political speech during religious services. Speaking about politics at a church or other house of worship is not the same as intervening or participating in an election, lawyers for the IRS as well as for conservative groups suing the agency wrote. ‘Bona fide communications internal to a house of worship, between the house of worship and its congregation, in connection with religious services, do neither of those things, any more than does a family discussion concerning candidates,’ they wrote. ‘Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted.’ The filing also notes that the IRS has rarely punished houses of worship for endorsements during religious services, though the agency has investigated churches over alleged Johnson Amendment violations. In April, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, told RNS that his church spent ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ during an IRS investigation.”
“Priest Warns: Christian Town in Holy Land No Longer Safe Amid Settler Attacks” – National Catholic Register: “In a disturbing and increasingly frequent pattern, the Palestinian town of Taybeh, located east of Ramallah and known as the last remaining town in the West Bank inhabited entirely by Christians, faces ongoing attacks by Israeli settlers targeting residents, their property, and farmlands. According to ACI MENA, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner, in recent weeks settlers have established a new outpost on the eastern edge of Taybeh atop the ruins of a farmhouse whose owners were displaced roughly a year ago. The outpost was erected in a vital agricultural zone, spanning around 17,000 dunums (roughly 4,200 acres), which serves as a key economic lifeline for the town. The area hosts thousands of olive trees, poultry and sheep farms, and wide fields used for seasonal crops. It forms the bulk of Taybeh’s total land area of about 24,000 dunums (about 5,900 acres). Attacks and infringements are not new. In 2019 and 2020, settlers set up similar illegal outposts around the town, often accompanied by arson attacks on crops, theft of equipment, and deliberately releasing cattle into the fields to destroy harvests.”
“7 Significant Changes in Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’” – Harvest Prude in Christianity Today: “Does President Donald Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill’ come as good news to evangelical churches and ministries? Trump signed the gargantuan spending and tax policy package on Friday after it narrowly passed in Congress. The budget reconciliation bill makes most of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent while spending more on the border, interior immigration enforcement and defense. It also cuts funding for health care programs like Medicaid and food benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Christians were quick to weigh in on aspects of the package, with some praising it for pro-family changes to the tax code while others lamented the considerable cuts to social safety-net programs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill adds $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over a ten-year period, predictions that the White House disputes. Here are some relevant aspects of the new law.”
“In Defense of Pint and Pipe: Smoking and drinking carry known risks. Here’s why I haven’t given them up.” – Malcolm Guite in Plough: “We live in an age when, at least in the affluent West, there is something of an obsession with bodily health, with healthy lifestyles, healthy eating and drinking, and a constant cycle of new diets, regimens, vitamin supplements, and exercise fads. And of course, attendant on these, and fueling their consumer ratings, a rash of hypochondria, self-diagnosis, health scares based on spurious medical blogs, etc. The one thing all these trends, however helpful or harmful, have in common is an essentially mechanistic and reductive account of health or (in the current jargon) ‘wellness’ itself. It is assumed that the body is essentially a machine, a linked series of mechanical processes whose performance can be optimized by ensuring the best input, in terms of foods and supplements, and the best output in terms of exercise. There is analytic attention to food and drink in terms of nutrients, fiber, and alcohol content, but no consideration of the ambience, culture, atmosphere, nuance, gregarious and social aspects of eating and drinking, no consideration of their meaning or the part they play in the richness, depth, and happiness of human life considered as a whole integrated experience. Most of the advice we are given on how to live a healthy life ignores or even undermines the great intangibles, the unmeasurable qualities, as opposed to the measured quantities, which make that life worth living.”
“Died: Jimmy Swaggart, TV Minister Caught in Scandal” – Daniel Silliman in Christianity Today: “Jimmy Swaggart, the Louisiana televangelist whose name became a watchword for scandal, died in Baton Rouge on July 1. He was 90. Swaggart was one of the best-known and most successful TV preachers in the 1980s, reaching an estimated half-billion people every week with riveting sermons about the struggle against sin and the good gift of God’s redeeming grace. Then, at the peak of his popularity, Swaggart was caught at a rundown motel paying a woman for sex. In 1988, he confessed on TV that he had sinned, face contorted with tears as he apologized to his congregation, those watching at home, his wife, his son, his son’s wife, other Pentecostal preachers and evangelists, the Assemblies of God, and, finally, Jesus Christ. ‘I have sinned against you, my Lord,’ Swaggart said, ‘and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God’s forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me.’ Forgetfulness couldn’t come fast enough for Swaggart, though, and when the Assemblies of God told him he couldn’t preach for a year, he rejected the discipline, left the denomination, and went back to doing what he had been doing.”
Music: Jon Guerra, “Reckoner (An Axe Laid to the Root),” from Jesus.
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Matthew Erickson 