church life – Lee Duigon

What’s Missing from the Easter Message? REPRINT

leeduigon(patty)January 16, 2026

From April 5, 2012

The Episcopal Church has sent me a copy of the annual Easter Message from Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori. It’s 383 words long, in eight paragraphs.

Not once in this message has the Presiding Bishop seen fit to mention the name of Jesus Christ.

Oh, she drops hints that Easter maybe sort of, kind of, have something to do with Jesus. In the next-to-last paragraph she says, “I would encourage you to look at where you are finding new life and resurrection, where life abundant and love incarnate are springing up in your lives and the lives of your communities.” It is just conceivable that this could be a roundabout approach to Jesus—albeit an approach that never quite gets there. And she concludes, “Give thanks for Easter. Give thanks for Resurrection. Give thanks for the presence of God incarnate in our midst.” God makes it into the very last line of the message.”

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Christian Professor’s Potter-Mania

leeduigon(patty)November 4, 2025

Also Posted at NewsWithViews.com

There is a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary who says the Harry Potter books are the best thing written in a century. He read the last one six times, and then read it backwards, he says. Wonder what kept him from reading it upside-down, inside-out, and sideways.

These are “some of the most beautiful books ever written,” exults Prof. Jerram Barrs. He insists they are the most profoundly Christian books around. We can’t see it. Maybe “Harry Potter” has a stealth theology. Maybe it doesn’t. But that’s not the point.

What we do see is a man who is paid to be a Christian teacher, in a world that is falling away from Christ and falling into moral meltdown, bending his knee to the popular culture. Maybe he believes in what he’s saying, but so what? To the anti-Christian world, and to the world of those who don’t know any better, his comments sound like “I surrender!”

Would you like to say a controversial thing? Try this:

“In all our dealings with non-believers, we Christians must never forget one thing—they’re wrong.”

When you say that, do you know who’s going to howl the loudest?

Christians!

Yes—your fellow Christians will be horrified when you say unbelievers are wrong. Professor Barrs might have an apoplexy. “How dare you say that? How dare you even think it?”

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By Request, ‘I Surrender All’

leeduigon(patty)September 1, 2025

Oops! Temporarily forgot this hymn request–I Surrender All, requested by Thewhiterabbit. If there;s an extra hymn today, consider it a bonus.

Is ‘Third Way’ the Same as ‘No Way’?

leeduigon(patty)August 31, 2025

A group of Democrats, “Third Way,” worried about their party’s future has been urging fellow Democrats to “police their language”,,, in case some regular people see it and jump to the conclusion that Democrats are crazy (https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-get-new-list-of-banned-woke-words-to-stop-sounding-like-crazy-people/).

So they’ve got a list of some 42 buzzwords that they’re not supposed to use anymore because it makes them sound like kooks. A few samples: “birthing person” (is that “woke” for “mother”? If so, why not just say “mother”?) “Cisgender.” (I can never remember what that’s supposed to mean.) And the pick of the litter:

NORMIE VOTERS

Uh, excuse me… Doesn’t that sound like one of those thing we’re not allowed to say? Like “We should be nice to ****s [insert one racial slur].

Sorry, but you guys still sound like crazy people.