Preacher's Kid: Honest Faith, Real World

To be the son of the Pentecostal minister is to believe in the possibility of divine healing. And, I do.  However, a lot depends on how broadly you define “healing,” and that, in turn, depends on your willingness to not limit how, when and where healing takes place. What I have trouble believing in are…

My dad, the preacher, never completely fit into the Pentecostal/evangelical Christian mold. That is not to say he did not embrace the charismatic experience. He did, and he preached the critical need to be “born again” (a future blog on that one, I promise), the imperative to be baptized by immersion and the desirability of …

So, the Vatican has weighed in on the growing scandal with media mogul Rupert Murdock’s News of the World cell phone hacking scandal. The Holy See’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, opines that its high time the news media to adopt what His Holiness has termed “info-ethics.” I heartily agree, as a veteran journalist who has watched…

When historians someday summarize the “Arab Spring” protests, be sure that the Facebook social networking site will get prominent mention. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, this hard-to-censor, impossible to stop digital electronic grapevine has been critical to liberty-seeking rebels as a news source and a means to organize rallies. It also has proven…

Sometimes, I look back on the survival of my personal faith within the crucible of a liberal arts college education as nothing less than a miracle. Like many preachers kids, I came out of a sheltered, fundamentalist Christian (and Pentecostal at that) upbringing unprepared, spiritually and intellectually, for the maelstrom of questioning that awaited me…

First, there was “Desperate Housewives,”  ABC’s popular chronicle of the bizarre, quirky and occasionally — OK, frequently — morally hazy if not bankrupt moral and ethical struggles of the women of the fictional Wisteria Lane. But whether you love it, hate it, or are one of those watch-and-wince periodic viewers, you know it’s a comedy-drama.…

The good folks at Beliefnet.com are working hard to complete design and functionality of this blog of mine. Hopefully, the comment portal for my posts will soon be up, as well as an RSS/subscription button. ALso, some nifty graphics. Be patient. It’s a virtue, you know. 🙂 That said, I’ve received a lot of feedback…

It’s summer. Vacation time, the opportunity to just relax, possibly visit new places, see the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Paris, the Greek Isles, Alaska’s inside passage, Disneyland, even Dollywood, for cryin’ out loud. You get the idea. Vacation = leaving stress behind. (Unless you are taking a road trip with young children). But this one…

When I began this blog, one thing Beliefnet wanted me to explore was what inspiration or faith lessons could be gleaned from so-called “reality television” shows. Hmm. Well, there’s no doubt there is a plethora of them. Survivor and Big Brother began the craze more than a decade ago. The shows’ terminology caught on as…

Hello, I’m Bob. And I’m a preacher’s kid. Sounds like introducing myself to a Twelve Step program, and truth be told, there a lot of us preacher’s kids who could use one.  I suppose, it follows that all ears in such a PKs Anonymous meeting would be especially attuned to the second step, that we…

More from Beliefnet and our partners