Word: rather
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...story has an American rocket ship encountering two curious phenomena in outer space. One is the entrance to the biggest black hole anyone aboard has seen, the other is a large, rather charmingly antique-looking space vehicle parked near it with its lights out. The men of the former craft are absolutely basic: one stalwart captain, one joky copilot, one overdedicated scientist, one slightly shifty civilian and one pretty lady whose function is to be placed in jeopardy. The sole proprietor of the ship they run into is Maximilian Schell, a great long-lost scientist whose ego trips...
...Roman Catholics, the sermon has not been as important, but rather a kind of spiritual hors d'oeuvre before the Eucharist. Otherwise, as Catholic Columnist Rick Casey explains, priests might become mere "performers" like Protestants, and "upstage the Eucharist." In Protestantism, however, the sermon is virtually raised to sacrament. Even if all believers are "priests," they still need expert guidance. Said Theologian Karl Earth, "Through the activity of preaching, God himself speaks." As a result, lackluster sermons strike at the heart of Protestant religion...
...graduates face a formidable challenge. Churchgoers today are "theologically illiterate," says Lutheran Minister Richard John Neuhaus in Freedom for the Ministry. A lot of things have to be explained rather than taken for granted. (A recent Christianity Today-Gallup survey showed that while 84% of Americans believe the Ten Commandments are still valid, more than half could not even identify five of them.) Preachers have less time in which to do the explaining too. Says Donald Macleod, who has taught homiletics at Princeton for 32 years: "The minds of listeners are geared to TV and the 30-second commercial...
...Church of New York. "The worst sin is dullness," says Read, a transplanted Scotsman and British army chaplain who is never dull. Still, he disapproves of the whole idea of "princes of the pulpit," and he deplores the fact that people go to church to hear a celebrated preacher rather than to worship. But if there is any one prince of the Protestant pulpit these days, it is Read...
...Memorial Church at Harvard University. A quintessential New England preacher who speaks like a Brahmin, Gomes is a board member of the Pilgrim Society in Plymouth, Mass., his famous home town. He happens to be black. Gomes (rhymes with homes) notes wryly that his parents raised him in "a rather backward environment in which language still had some validity." The Plymouth schools thereafter drilled him in memorizing large chunks of great prose and poetry, a skill he retains...