Religion

Last night we had one of the longest services of the year in the Orthodox Church: the ritualized Holy Thursday reading of these 12 Passion narratives from the Gospels. It takes about three hours, with all the accompanying prayers, chants, Psalms, candle-lighting, and ceremonials. Holy Week in the Orthodox Church is pretty close to overwhelming. It’s grueling — I’m putting in a five-hour shift from midnight till five a.m. on Saturday, reading the Psalms aloud in church — but it’s also transcendentally beautiful.

This, from The Atlantic, is one reason why the morally sane will end up having to withdraw from this culture:

A reader writes, provocatively and interestingly:

A new national survey conducted for the Deseret News finds that Americans don’t pay as much attention to the Sabbath as we used to. Excerpt:

Half of U.S. adults today (50 percent) say the Sabbath has personal spiritual meaning for them, down from 74 percent in 1978. However, 62 percent of people agree that it’s important for society to have one day a week set aside for spiritual rest, the survey reported — and only 11 percent disagree with that proposition.

Scientology leader David Miscavige is engaged in a new war with his 80 year old father over a new tell- all book. The book exposes internal Scientology leadership struggles between founder L. Ron Hubbard and current leader David Miscavige and alleges poor living conditions and violence at the organization’s California headquarters. Ron Miscavige’s highly anticipated memoir entitled ‘Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me’, is due to hit stores next week. RT reports: Among the allegations in the book is that David “seized power” from Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.