LiturgicalCredo.com’s Blog

“What scruples about human beings did Stalin have that Hitler didn’t? Anything?”
– a quote by William F. Buckley, Jr., that I scribbled down while he was being interviewed on CSPAN2, April 2, 2000

I met Buckley after a Firing Line debate over economic sanctions against Cuba. It was taped in a college theater in Hartsville, S.C., ten or eleven years ago if memory serves. Michael Kinsley was the moderator.

In his opening remarks for the debate, Buckley raised his opponents’ position — they argued that economic sanctions against Cuba would work — and answered it with a sonorous, “When?” He believed the sanctions hadn’t worked, and never would, so we should let the free market roll.

Afterward, Kinsley disappeared but Buckley came out into the theater’s lobby. Starstruck, I introduced myself as “Colin Burch” and then asked him to sign my copies of Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist and Nearer, My God.

He opened a book, leaned over with a pen, and said, “OK, Colin Burch?”

“Yessir,” I said. Then forgetting that I just told him my full name not thirty seconds ago, and hopeful that he had seen some of my own political journalism, I asked him, “How’d you know my last name?”

He replied calmly, generously, and matter-of-factly: “Because you just told me.”

Duh! I thought while he signed both books.

Later he posed for a photo with Kristi and me. I tried to put my arm around his shoulders, but he kept his arm firmly at his side, not accepting my casual affection, and instead chose to gently put his arm behind Kristi’s back. I figured it out. Buckley was not about to share affections with a strange male, or any male, for that matter.

 Buckley, rest in peace.

-Colin Foote Burch

WATERLOO, ON. — If you identify yourself as Christian, what kind of Christian are you? That’s the question being asked by researchers in an online survey designed to give participants personalized insight into their faith.
   The Rev. Marsha Cutting of the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary heads a team of researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University, Liberty University and Boston University in developing the research instrument, called the Inclusive Christian Scale.

   After responding to questions about their faith, participants will receive a score showing where their beliefs lie across six different emphases that an individual Christian might have: Congregational Involvement, Evangelical, Christian Conservative, Golden Rule, Activist, and Mystical. Participants are then asked how accurately they feel these scores reflect their own understanding of their faith.

    “We need to have a good instrument that accurately represents the people we’re trying to study,” said Cutting, an associate professor of pastoral care and counselling at Laurier. “Our research on religion and its relationship to other issues is undercut if we can’t do a good job of defining who is religious.”

   Researchers hope to attract participants representing different ages, genders and ethnicities. Those interested in participating can visit www.religiosityscalesproject.com.

   The instrument being tested in the study will be used in research that examines how religion relates to specific subjects such as health, prejudice or voting behaviour.

   The Inclusive Christian Scale is the second part of the larger Religiosity Scales Project. It is designed to address the limitations of previous scales, which tended to be more conservative in nature and didn’t accurately capture the full range of Christian faith.

-Distributed by Religion Press Release Services, a division of the Religion News Service

Rhett Iseman Trull’s poem “Counting Miracles at the State Asylum” will be included in an upcoming anthology entitled “The Poetry of Recovery,” which will feature several other established poets.

The poem was first published about a year ago in LiturgicalCredo.com, a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. LiturgicalCredo.com will be credited in the anthology.

Read ”Counting Miracles at the State Asylum” at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/PoetryPage031507.html .

DHAKA, Bangladesh – A 70-year-old woman convert from Islam died on Friday (Feb. 1) from burns she suffered when unknown assailants in a Muslim-majority area (about 150 miles northwest of the capital) set her home on fire last month. Rahima Beoa of Cinatuly village suffered burns over 70 to 80 percent of her body after the home she shared with her daughter and son-in-law, also converts, was set ablaze the night of Jan. 7, said Khaled Mintu, Rangpur regional supervisor of the Isha-e-Jamat (Jesus’ Church) Bangladesh denomination. Villagers were upset over her conversion to Christianity and that of her daughter and son-in-law, he said. “Before her burial, the family members forgave those who set fire in the house and prayed to God that this kind of incident not occur anymore in this country,” Mintu told Compass. “They also prayed for a situation where Muslims and Christians can practice their own religion side by side peacefully.”

-Compass Direct News