Bridget MacDonald
Bridget MacDonald is an author at Religion News Service.
All Stories by Bridget MacDonald
Icon exhibit hints at thaw in U.S.-Russian relations
By Bridget MacDonald — December 29, 2008
CLINTON, Mass.-In this sleepy former mill town, where geopolitical tensions seem a world away, Americans are getting a fresh look at Russia through a lens that’s seldom made available on U.S. shores: the Russian sacred icon. Weekly attendance at the two-year-old Museum of Russian Icons has doubled from about 250 to 500 since mid-October, when […]
History’s most notorious rude host lost to history
By Bridget MacDonald — December 4, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) ‘Tis the season for Christmas pageants everywhere to dramatize one of Scripture’s most familiar scenes and cast a cold-hearted innkeeper, who shoos away the holy family to a lowly stable. But pageants and sermons castigating the infamous innkeeper are giving him an underserved bad rap, scholars say, and are […]
History’s most notorious rude host lost to history
By Bridget MacDonald — December 3, 2008
(UNDATED) ‘Tis the season for Christmas pageants everywhere to dramatize one of Scripture’s most familiar scenes and cast a cold-hearted innkeeper, who shoos away the holy family to a lowly stable. But pageants and sermons castigating the infamous innkeeper are giving him an underserved bad rap, scholars say, and are feeding dangerous misconceptions about how […]
10 minutes with … Scott Bader-Saye
By Bridget MacDonald — September 25, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In the final weeks of Campaign 2008, presidential candidates are lavishing promises to keep America safe from terrorist attacks and from economic meltdown. But some Christian thinkers are wondering aloud whether America might be truer to Christian ideals _ and a safer country _ if voters and candidates would […]
Pacifist churches under fire for Ahmadinejad dinner
By Bridget MacDonald — September 19, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Keepers of Protestantism’s pacifist traditions will showcase just how far they’ve come from their humble roots in Europe’s persecuted peasantry when they share an intimate dinner in New York next Thursday (Sept. 25) with a world leader. It’s not just any world leader, however, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, […]
Growing numbers say diet must reflect the divine
By Bridget MacDonald — September 10, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When Marilyn Lorenz of Alma, Mich., talks about living out her Catholic faith in daily life, she starts by describing what’s inside her refrigerator. The produce is grown on nearby farms, and the milk is organic and hormone-free. Meat comes from a local farmer who lets his animals graze […]
Episcopal seminaries face uncertain finances, future
By Bridget MacDonald — May 15, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) In the cloistered world of Episcopal seminaries, time sometimes seems to stand still as clergy-in-training gather in stone chapels to pray in ways familiar to their forebears centuries earlier. But the semblance of timelessness can be deceiving. Some of the 11 seminaries affiliated with the Episcopal Church are slashing […]
Campuses struggle to `consecrate’ scenes of violence
By Bridget MacDonald — March 14, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Officials at Northern Illinois University (NIU) have spent the past month comforting students and consoling families in the aftermath of a gunman’s Feb. 14 rampage that left five dead in an auditorium. But the hard part may be just beginning. Now the campus community is struggling to figure out […]
Evicted Hindus ponder fate of sacred artifacts
By Bridget MacDonald — January 24, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service EPPING, N.H. _ Six Hindu men and a woman huddled together on a 20-degree January morning along a dirt road beside a series of posted “NO TRESPASSING” signs. They had come to save their deity. Having been evicted from their bucolic, 100-acre temple grounds two weeks earlier, they drove from […]
Former Klansman reflects on a life redeemed of hate
By Bridget MacDonald — January 8, 2008
c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Stephen Dear has spent the past 10 years waging an uphill battle to abolish the death penalty in the American South. He’s had virtually no help from the region’s powerful evangelical clergy. But unlike in years past, Dear has new confidence that within six months, he can round up […]
10 minutes with … William Ury
By Bridget MacDonald — December 27, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) As politicians try to jump start a new round of Middle East peace talks, one of the world’s foremost experts on negotiation is literally forging a new path to peace in the region. William Ury, director of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University, is the visionary behind the […]
`September Dawn’ Explore Mormons’ Darkest Hour
By Bridget MacDonald — August 16, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) One hundred fifty years ago, a glorious September morning in the Utah mountains morphed into Mormonism’s darkest hour when a skittish militia opened fire on a wagon train, leaving more than 120 men, women and children dead in a flowery field. Now the “Mountain Meadows Massacre” is becoming more […]
Religious Investing Gains More Clout
By Bridget MacDonald — August 2, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Religious activists with a moral agenda for corporate America used to rely primarily on consumer boycotts and sympathetic lawmakers to get the attention of Wall Street. But now their toolbox is growing _ and there’s a lot more money it. Over the past decade, America’s market for religious investment […]
Little Movement Thinks Its Big Moment Has Arrived
By Bridget MacDonald — July 19, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Alan Cecil is one spiritual leader who actually gets excited when people lose their faith. That’s because his little-known Noahide (pronounced No-AH-HIDE) movement specializes in ministering to serious God-seekers who no longer trust their religious authorities. And in an age marked by clergy scandals and hot-selling books that skewer […]
10 Minutes With … Sean Meshorer
By Bridget MacDonald — July 4, 2007
c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) When some 1,000 church pastors go to their mailboxes this summer, they’ll find a free book from a publisher whose titles routinely focus on such non-Christian subjects as yoga and reincarnation. This time, with the release of “Revelations of Christ,” California publisher Crystal Clarity aims to reintroduce pastors and […]
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