by devotionalia | Apr 19, 2025 | Christianity, Roman Catholic
What Purgatory Looks Like. The human experience is rarely black and white. Most of us don’t live like saints, but we’re not villains either. We try. We stumble. We grow. We carry regrets alongside good intentions. And when we reach the end of the road, we...
by devotionalia | Apr 17, 2025 | Christianity, Roman Catholic
Are Purgatory and Hell The Same Thing? Purgatory. Just the word sounds chilling, doesn’t it? I can’t help but picture Dante’s Inferno, a fiery hell where souls scream in agony, caught in a place of terror and suffering that feels like it may never...
by devotionalia | Apr 16, 2025 | Spirituality
Spiritual But Not Religious Ethics The rise of people identifying as ‘spiritual but not religious’ (or SBNR) is one of the more interesting shifts in today’s belief landscape. As of 2023, almost a quarter of American adults consider themselves SBNR....
by devotionalia | Apr 14, 2025 | Spirituality
How the Spiritual But Not Religious Create Meaning. When I posted my ‘Who are the SBNRs’ post on Reddit, it generated some heated discussion. Criticism of SBNR rituals was included, and some people got rather angry (the ALL-CAPS crew arrived). Some of the...
by devotionalia | Apr 11, 2025 | Christianity, Protestantism, Reformed/Calvinist
Political Idolatry is becoming more common. There’s a viral video making the rounds: a woman paints a portrait of Donald Trump in a public setting while worship music plays, hands are raised, and the atmosphere feels more like a religious revival than a political...
by devotionalia | Apr 10, 2025 | Christianity, Philosophy, Roman Catholic
The Separation of Church and State in France. When I think of the French Revolution, I envision a political earthquake. If we set aside the images of brutal violence and gore for a moment, the Revolution was a full-on reimagining of society, identity, and power. We...
by devotionalia | Apr 8, 2025 | Parables, Protestantism, Reformed/Calvinist
Jesus New Wine Old Wineskins Explained Just as Jesus taught, the fermentation of justice, inclusion, and radical love requires new spiritual vessels. JD Vance’s speech in Munich about the supposed decline and misalignment in European values has been troubling me for a...
by devotionalia | Apr 5, 2025 | UK Politics, US Politics
We’re living through an era where populist, far-right leaders seem to grow more powerful the more embattled they become. Their legal troubles, rather than halting their momentum, often act like rocket fuel on a bonfire. The question is no longer just whether criminal...
by devotionalia | Apr 3, 2025 | Anglicanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheranism, Protestantism, Reformed/Calvinist, Roman Catholic
We don’t often talk of Christianity and Buddhism in the same breath. One thinks of following Christ and gaining salvation, while the other, the Buddha and enlightenment. One is theistic, the other non-theistic. One teaches us that we have a soul, the other that we...
by devotionalia | Apr 2, 2025 | Higher Education, Society
A guilty pleasure of mine is spending time on Twitter (ok, X, if you insist). On the one hand, I loathe that I am supporting Elon Musk by being one of the number of active users. On the other, it’s so compelling that I struggle to tear myself away. This week, the...
