The Plain Dealer has a story today about the ongoing financial corruption trial in Cleveland. They report that some diocesan employees actually use an acronym for the apparent memory lapses of the diocesan officials who have testified in court.

“We call it RCA, or Roman Collar Amnesia,” employee Janice Hesselton testified during the federal kickback trial of a former diocesan accountant, Anton Zgoznik.”

To read the whole story, click here.

I went down to the Courtroom today, but all the proceedings were apparently conducted in chambers. I hope to get back to the trial later in the week.

Those of you inclined to think of us Californians as Pinot-Noir-sipping, baby-radicchio-with-a-port wine-vinagrette-eating, Green-Party-voting-fifth-columnists-for-Al Qaeda ought to hightail it out to Mariposa County, CA. Known nationwide as the home of the beautiful Yosemite Valley, I’m sure that it is only a matter of time before Mariposa is seen as the the launching pad for the next great trend in Christian Youth Ministry: Paintball for Jesus!

This is a mountain town where
there’s a Bible verse painted over a pizza parlor door and a local
politician keeps a cardboard cutout of John Wayne holding a Winchester
rifle in his office as proof of fealty to the NRA.

But a proposal to bring “Paintball for Jesus” to public land has some people riled.

“I’m sorry, maybe I’m missing something in my upbringing as a
Methodist, but Paintball for Jesus? God help us all. Seriously, this
teaches bad habits of shooting each other,” said Mariposa County
Supervisor Brad Aborn, 71, the John Wayne fan who is a former Vietnam
War Navy helicopter pilot.

Church youth leader Jeff Tomerlin contends, however, that paintball is the perfect ministry.

His church, New Life Christian Fellowship, wants to play paintball on 15 acres of county land.

“I really wanted to do something for the youth where they could see
godly adults acting as mentors. We thought about going the skateboard
route, but none of us are skateboarders,” said Tomerlin, 45.

After church on the third Sunday of every month, a group of teens and
adults from New Life cook up a big meal of hot dogs, give testimonies
about Jesus in their life, suit up in camouflage and grab donated
paint-shooting guns (“markers” in paintball terms).

They have affectionately nicknamed their paintball and Jesus games PBJ.

Now as someone who spent his teenage years in a group that dressed up in medieval armour and bashed each other’s brains out with large hunks of rattan wrapped in duct tape, I’m hardly one to be pulling the mote out of my brother’s eye on this one. But I’ll admit that I am probably among those who, in the words of the author of the article, “recoil at linking the Prince of Peace with packing heat.” Still, I see a little commerical opportunity here to write a new ditty to the tune of “Drop Kick Me Jesus.”

Paintball me Jesus through the battlefield of life!
Cover me as I dodge from the left to the right!
I thrill to splatter my brothers in Christ!
Paintball me Jesus through the battlefield of life!

Fascinating article in the New Republic this week about a number of evangelical Christians who have embraced Eastern Orthodoxy. I’ve read a fair amount of coverage about prominent evangelicals crossing the Tiber, but this is the first feature length article I’ve seen about evangelicals embracing Orthodoxy.

The story focuses on Wilbur Ellsworth, a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Wheaton, IL, a town that some wryly refer to as the evangelical Vatican because of the presence of Wheaton College. Ellsworth found himself in increasing conflict with congregation members who embraced the “church growth” movement. After he left the congregation in 2000, he began a spiritual journey that ended him with him entering the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

While the AOC is smaller than the other major Orthodox churches in the United States, it appears to have a particular attraction for evangelicals:

Ellsworth’s story is hardly unique. Most of the approximately 150 members of the Orthodox parish he now leads are former evangelicals themselves. Even Ellsworth’s transition from evangelical minister to Orthodox priest is not uncommon. Of the more than 250 parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, some 60 percent are led by convert priests, most of whom are from evangelical backgrounds. And, according to Bradley Nassif, a professor at North Park University and the leading academic expert on Evangelical- Orthodox dialogue, the Antiochian Archdiocese has seen over 150 percent church growth in the last 20 years, approximately 75 percent of which is attributable to converts.

The article provides some interesting recent history of the AOC in the United States, where a large influx of former evangelicals in the mid-1980s (including the writer Frederica Matthews-Greene) appears to have kickstarted the denomination’s recent growth.  As an aside, there is at least one amusing (but understandable) theological misstep in the article, which suggests that Western Christians “relegate the Holy Spirit to a lesser place than God the Father and God the Son.”  That may often be true as a matter of piety, but certainly not as a matter of doctrine.  On the whole, though, it’s an engaging read.