Tag: easter

I start my column with the headlines from the past three years about the clashes between the Israeli forces and the Palestinians at the holy mosque of Masjid Al-Aqsa during the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims. 

Easter traditionally is the most popular day of the year to attend church, with 62% of Americans reporting they took part in holiday services before the COVID-19 pandemic upended life in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. But, at a time when fewer people are identifying as Christian and church attendance has been slow to recover from the pandemic, celebrations of the most sacred day on the Christian calendar are becoming bigger and more detached from their religious roots.

Christian churches across the world celebrate Easter in diverse ways, and the Spokane regional churches are no different.

My old landmarks are fading, the people who built them disappearing. That happens to all of us as we age. I have known this intuitively. But now I am experiencing it. And it is unsettling.

As I look back on my childhood, I realize how lucky I am that my parents gave my brother and me the choice. We were able to choose what we believed in and how we believed in it.

If resurrection did not and does not mean physically/bodily rising from the dead, what could Paul, the Gospel writers, and the early Church have meant by that word? And what does it mean for us today?

propose that within the constellation of Easter stories, the primary event, the event that changed everything, was the crucifixion, not the commonly understood resurrection.