by Richard Chrisman | Aug 26, 2017 | For a Public Theology
Sex is always in the news. How can it not be? Sex matters to everybody. Either the lack of it, the ecstasy of it, the pain of it, the surprises of it. We can’t get enough of sex, either as a newstory or the real thing. And making love always seems to be...
by Richard Chrisman | Aug 26, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed., For Religious Congregations
Your life is a story trying to be told. You are trying to tell it. Every day you come home and tell the day’s story to a mate or a friend. On your way home, on the bus or subway, or stopping at a neighborhood bar, you will hear others telling their story, too....
by Richard Chrisman | Aug 14, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed., For Religious Congregations
On Sunday, August 13, 2017, churches welcomed to Sabbath services sorrowful congregations looking for any wailing wall upon which to grieve the Charlottesville cataclysm. Another moral implosion in America’s pock-marked landscape! While we wait for national...
by Richard Chrisman | Jul 7, 2017 | For Religious Congregations
Look around the whole place. What meets the visitors’ eyes? Will they feel invited into our ministry in the larger world? The pictures on the wall, for instance. At my home church, 13 of the 17 framed photos hanging in the vestibule and the hallways and the...
by Richard Chrisman | Feb 14, 2017 | For Religious Congregations
“What is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the rooftops.” So instructs Jesus to his disciples. So are we to take insights granted to us by God and make them heard abroad. We are exhorted to transfer our private epiphanies to a public arena. How do we...
by Richard Chrisman | Jan 25, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed.
Literacy in civics; literacy about history; literacy of belles-letres. All of these have won attention in public and higher education lately. Add to these a call now for religious literacy. Current events demands it, and educational leaders have found funding for...
by Richard Chrisman | Jan 21, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed.
As the great hymn proclaims: New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth. –James Russell Lowell. When Christian denominations began to bump into each other more, college...
by Richard Chrisman | Jan 5, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed.
Here are the trends that tell me campus chaplains have to seize a public stage soon or wither completely away: religious chaplaincies have over the last fifty years gradually been moved away from the central consciousness of campus life to the periphery; in the course...
by Richard Chrisman | Jan 5, 2017 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed.
I see college chaplains needing to fulfill the role of “culture workers,” in Paolo Freire’s terminology. You are, after all, the custodians of great traditions and our society badly needs you to function as such. How? By giving students the platform, the budget and...
by Richard Chrisman | Dec 14, 2016 | For Chaplains in Higher Ed.
Where is public space to be found? College students (really, all of us) live in an ocean of private interaction. We swim from one personal pool to another trying to get into one. Those already in a pool are trying to keep “unacceptables” out. Such...
