Security training offered at church
St. James United Methodist Church -- 321 Pleasant Valley Drive in Little Rock -- will host an armed intruder security training from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday.
The event will be led by experts from Firestorm, the ALICE Training Institute and Church Mutual Insurance Co. (ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.)
According to a news release, participants will be taught how to identify and monitor "behavioral warning signs," and know when to anonymously report suspicious activities; work with police; respond to a gunman; and minimize injury and death.
For more information, contact the church at (501) 217-6700; to learn more about church security visit firestorm.com, alicetraining.com or churchmutual.com.
-- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Vatican criticizes 'prosperity gospel'
VATICAN CITY -- A Vatican-approved journal has launched its second major critique of American evangelicals, dismissing "prosperity gospel" theology as a "pseudo" faith tied up with politics and the American dream.
Two of Pope Francis' top communications advisers -- an Italian Jesuit and an Argentine Protestant -- penned "The Prosperity Gospel: Dangerous and Different" for the current issue of the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, published Wednesday.
In the article, the authors note that the "prosperity gospel" and its belief that God wants his followers to be wealthy, healthy and happy has spread throughout the world, particularly in Latin America and Asia, thanks to its charismatic proponents' effective use of TV and media.
But they point to its origins in the United States and its underpinning of the American dream.
-- The Associated Press
Episcopalians OK prayer book redo
After more than a week of debate among church leaders about whether God should be referred to by male pronouns -- and about the numerous other issues that come up when writing a prayer book -- the Episcopal Church decided last week to revise the 1979 Book of Common Prayer that Episcopalians hold dear.
The question now is when it will happen.
The main impetus for the drive to rewrite the book -- the central unifying text of all Episcopal worship, with roots in the first Anglican Book of Common Prayer, published in 1549 -- was a demand for gender-neutral language to refer to God, rather than "He" and "King" and "Father."
"We really hold fast to the prayer book as a core text -- as a marker of our identity," said the Rev. Ruth Meyers, a leading theologian on Episcopal liturgy. She shares the view of many in the church: that God does not have a gender, male or female, and the prayer book should be revised accordingly.
The church has already authorized many alternate texts, which churches can use as supplements to the Book of Common Prayer, with gender-neutral language, and the conference authorized more of those texts and voted to make them more widely available.
In the past, priests needed the approval of their bishops to use the supplemental texts; now, any priest can choose to use them, Meyers said.
-- The Washington Post
Religion on 07/21/2018