All posts tagged: resurrection

Kansas last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. A megachurch pastor aims to change that.

Kansas last sent a Democrat to the Senate in 1932. A megachurch pastor aims to change that.

(RNS) — Thirty-six years ago, the Rev. Adam Hamilton co-founded a church with a handful of people in a funeral home chapel. Now, that congregation is the largest United Methodist church in the nation, and Hamilton is setting his sights on a new venue: the United States Congress. Hamilton, 61, announced his run for U.S. Senate on Thursday morning (April 30) in a press conference in Prairie Village, the suburban city he was raised in. Describing himself as an “independent-minded Democrat,” he emphasized his church’s community building and charity work and said his decades in ministry prepared him to be a bridge-builder in Congress. “In a world that feels more and more divided, I’ve had the privilege of being a pastor for 36 years of a church that’s roughly equally divided between Republicans, Democrats and independents,” said Hamilton at the press conference. “Our people love each other precisely because of their differences.” With over 24,000 members and nine locations in the Kansas City area, Resurrection, A United Methodist Church has earned a reputation for its …

Berlin Museum Oversees Digital Resurrection of Destroyed Paintings

Berlin Museum Oversees Digital Resurrection of Destroyed Paintings

Hundreds of paintings lost to the ravages of war—including multiple works by Peter Paul Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Anthony van Dyck, and Caravaggio—will soon be viewable online courtesy of a digitization initiative by Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. The museum’s formidable collection of Old Master paintings was damaged by two fires around the end of World War II. But as reported by the Art Newspaper, digital renderings made from high-resolution glass negatives from a photo-documentation campaign started in 1925 are bringing the works back to life, in a way. Related Articles “The losses have long represented a major gap in the visual record and in attribution, provenance and conservation research,” according to TAN. But records by way of the glass negatives—most of them made by the German photographer Gustav Schwarz, as part of an ongoing process related to new acquisitions that continued until 1944—stand to make the works accessible. “They have tremendous documentary value—not only for the museum and the collection itself but also for the public,” Katja Kleinert, the Gemäldegalerie’s deputy director and project leader, told TAN. “By digitizing …

Why Jesus Preached to the Imprisoned Spirits Between His Death and Resurrection – OpentheWord.org

Why Jesus Preached to the Imprisoned Spirits Between His Death and Resurrection – OpentheWord.org

A strange Bible passages found in 1 Peter 3 says that between Christ’s death and resurrection, the Lord preached to spirits imprisoned during the days of Noah: “He also went and made proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who once were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark,…” (1 Peter 3:19-20) Who were these spirits? We have one of two choices. They were either supernatural beings or the spirits of dead people. Some have wondered if these were the spirits of people who died during the flood. But the verse says these spirits were imprisoned while the Ark was being constructed. The flood hadn’t happened yet. Peter brings more clarity in his second letter, where he alludes again to imprisoned supernatural beings during the Days of Noah. This time Peter clearly states that these were angels (Greek aggelos) writing: For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, held for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, …

Dexter: Resurrection season 2 casts Downton Abbey icon in regular role

Dexter: Resurrection season 2 casts Downton Abbey icon in regular role

Dan Stevens has been cast as a serial killer in Dexter: Resurrection season 2. The actor will appear as The Five Borough Killer, a series regular role, in the second season of the Dexter sequel series, which began filming on Monday (13 April). The character is described as someone “who, much like Zodiac, taunts the police with phone calls threatening the murder of innocent citizens. When he follows through with the awful deeds… the city and the police are terrorised.” Stevens joins recent new addition Brian Cox (Succession), who is set to play a character dubbed The New York Ripper, a serial killer who plagued the city years ago. It was also recently announced that Uma Thurman would be reprising her role as Charley, the former Special Ops officer who fled the city last season, while Michael C Hall will return in the titular role of Dexter. Plot details for season 2 are currently being kept under wraps. Dan Stevens. Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Deadline The show was confirmed to be returning for another instalment back …

Trump Administration Agencies Post Easter Messages Celebrating Christ’s Resurrection

Trump Administration Agencies Post Easter Messages Celebrating Christ’s Resurrection

Numerous previous presidents have issued statements in recognition of Easter Sunday. This year, the Trump administration went a step farther, with several key Cabinet departments heralding Christ’s resurrection on their official social media accounts. The Defense Department shared a post on X from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth.” “Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department —- is proud to protect and defend religious liberty,” it said. The posts drew thousands of comments. Some people expressed joy at the departments’ open embrace of Christianity; others were outraged, saying government agencies should not be promoting the doctrine of a particular faith. Hegseth frequently invokes his evangelical faith as head of the armed forces, depicting a Christian nation trying to vanquish its foes with military might. Last week, Hegseth hosted his first monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon since the Iran war began. …

The Resurrection Does Not Have Any Signs of Being an Invented Story

The Resurrection Does Not Have Any Signs of Being an Invented Story

The republished article first appeared in New English Review. The Bible tells us that the “fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’.” (Psalm 14:1) And for the first time since 1956, Easter Sunday (1st April 2018) will coincide with April Fools’ Day. But according to Scripture, only a fool could deny the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. But is the Resurrection something that we should just believe in by blind faith? Aside from properly basic belief, it’s certainly not, as the Resurrection is one of the most studied events in history. If it is false, then Christianity is based on wishful thinking—a delusion; even St Paul admits to that. However, it is more probable than improbable that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is true because of the many factors that point toward its authenticity. Let us look at some of these factors: The majority of distinguished biblical scholars agree on the witnesses’ testimonies of the appearances of Jesus after the crucifixion. Despite this, some sceptics have asked, could the appearances be hallucinations? This …

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

Some churches don’t preach a literal resurrection. Here’s how they celebrate Easter.

(RNS) — “I don’t have a belief in any form of resurrection,” declared the Rev. Duncan Littlefair, then-pastor of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to NBC’s Frank McGee on the “Today” show in April 1973. Wearing a white turtleneck and navy blazer, the pastor explained that he viewed the idea of Jesus’ physical resurrection as “absurd” and the notion of being saved only through Christ as a “totally provincial, Western view.” In the days that followed, both NBC and Fountain Street faced backlash as viewers caught wind of the pastor’s unconventional beliefs. But even in the 1970s, Fountain Street, a historic church founded in 1869 that had earned a reputation as a dogma-free activist outpost, wasn’t the only church where Jesus’ resurrection could be called into question. In 1961, the Unitarian Universalist Association had formed, a noncreedal tradition whose theological heritage saw Jesus as a moral exemplar, not God incarnate. These days, the landscape of noncreedal faith traditions has grown to encompass not just Unitarian Universalist congregations or historic, independent churches like Fountain …

In the Easter story, women are the first to proclaim the resurrection – but churches today are still divided over female preachers

In the Easter story, women are the first to proclaim the resurrection – but churches today are still divided over female preachers

(The Conversation) — On Easter Sunday, festively decorated churches across the United States will be filled with worshippers eager to celebrate the most important day in the Christian year. While some will attend services led by pastors who are women, the overwhelming majority of worshippers will not. Women constitute 23.7% of professional clergy in the U.S. and an increasing percentage of people earning graduate theology degrees. However, data from 2018-19 shows that only 14% of U.S. congregations, most of which are Christian, are led by women. The number of women in Christian pulpits stands in jarring juxtaposition with the Easter narratives in the New Testament. The Gospel stories of the resurrection of Jesus point to how essential women’s witness and proclamation were in the earliest stages of Christianity. First witness Many denominations share a system assigning particular Bible verses to be read at each week’s services – a cycle that takes three years, called Years A, B and C, to complete. Because Easter 2026 falls in year A in the common lectionary, the Gospel reading …

Why Paul Ignored the Most Convincing Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection? – OpentheWord.org

Why Paul Ignored the Most Convincing Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection? – OpentheWord.org

Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene by Alexander Andreyevich Ivano, 1835, Wikipedia, Public Domain 156 | Why Paul Ignored the Most Convincing Evidence of Christ’s Resurrection? FOLLOW OUR PODCAST ON (search opentheword): PODCAST NOTES: Jesus’ Resurrection is the key to our Christian faith. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:4, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” So the Apostle spent several verses in chapter 15 providing evidence of the resurrection. But in the process Paul missed the most compelling argument, proving it was not a fabrication. This is because the first people to discover the empty tomb and to see the risen Christ were women. Mark writes in chapter 16:1, that when Mary Magdalene, Salome and Mary the mother of James went to Jesus’ body with spices, they found the the stone rolled away and Christ’s body missing An angel told them that Jesus had risen from the dead in verse 6. The women rushed back to tell Peter and John what had happened. The two men …

‘Gambling for resurrection’: Amid domestic crises, is US war on Iran a ‘wag the dog’ trump card?

‘Gambling for resurrection’: Amid domestic crises, is US war on Iran a ‘wag the dog’ trump card?

Delano D’Souza welcomes Dr. Carla Martinez Machain, Professor of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Machain offers a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s decision to initiate military strikes against Iran: It must be understood through the lens of domestic political strategy rather than a coherent foreign policy doctrine. The conflict reflects what political scientists call “gambling for resurrection”: a high-risk strategy in which leaders turn to international conflict in the hope of reversing their political fortunes. Keywords for this article Source link