Tag: book

(Reblog) Book Review – A Time to Embrace: Same-Sex Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics (second edition)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Image
Saints Sergius and Bacchus, companions and martyrs. Click the link on the picture to learn more about their lives.

 

Reblogged from the Presbyterian Outlook:

A Time to Embrace by William Stacy Johnson

Reviewed by Melissa Kirkpatrick

Johnson lays out the historical context of same-sex relationships from what we know of the practices in Rome and in Greece at the time of Paul, when such relationships were hardly consensual, to the scholarly work of the Middle Ages, where there is much evidence that profoundly close same-sex relationships (which may or may not have been sexual) went unquestioned by the church. What is clear in this history is that there was never a single way of approaching or dealing with same-sex relationships across time or place or faith.

Click here to read the full article

 

A Good Word

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Last week, Bruce Reyes-Chow, Moderator of my denomination’s 218th General Assembly, announced that his friend, Landon Whitsitt, would be publishing a free eBook of compiled prayers and sermons based on the recent school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

I’m honored to be able to say that my sermon from last Sunday, The Dark Side of Joy, was submitted and accepted.

The book, A Good Word, edited by Landon Whitsitt, is now available for free download at Landon’s website: landonwhitsitt.com

agoodwordpdfcover

The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
Leonard Cohen. Image by Rama. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Leonard Cohen. Image by Rama. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

“At a time when everything has fragmented so dramatically, it’s sort of heartening to see that this song can connect as universally as it did”

-Alan Light

Cohen labored over “Hallelujah,” filling a notebook with some 80 verses before recording. The song has Biblical references, but Cohen’s stated goal was to give a nonreligious context to hallelujah, an expression of praise. Some of those hallelujah moments are clearly sexual, given a lyric like “she tied you to a kitchen chair … and from your lips she drew the hallelujah.” The author’s droll humor is present throughout in lines like “you don’t really care for music, do you?”

Click here to read the full article at Huffington Post…

Click here to purchase Alan Light’s new book at Amazon.com