Worship

Watching "I Want a Famous Face," I wanted aspirin -- and, later, as I thought more and more about MTV's makeover documentary series, cyanide. This new show would harsh even the most reality-friendly viewer's mellow, as it tracks self-loathing wannabes going under the knife to get Brad Pitt's nose and Britney Spears's bosom. It's like watching people play Mr. Potato Head with their own bodies and minds. Goodbye uniqueness and self-acceptance, hello karaoke of the soul. MTV, like the entertainment world at large, has always fed the hungry beast of celebrity worship.

An Ecumenical Service of Worship at the United Church of Christ, 10 Bedford St., will be held next Sunday at 7 p.m. as part of a continuing celebration of the town's approaching tricentennial on June 10. The church's music director, Doug Ulwick, has organized the event to include anyone who enjoys singing and would be interested in joining in with the choir for the historic celebration. Abington became incorporated nearly 300 years ago after meeting a gubernatorial request that the town establish a church with an ordained minister.

BEIJING — Beijing police detained dozens of worshipers from an unapproved Christian church yesterday as they were trying to hold services in a public space after they were evicted from their usual place of worship, a parishioner said. Leaders of the unregistered Shouwang church had told members to gather at an open-air venue in Beijing for Sunday morning services, but police, apparently alerted to their plans, taped off the area and took away people who showed up to take part.

Gunmen attacked a Catholic Mass on a university campus Sunday in northern Nigeria, using small explosives to draw worshippers out before shooting those who fled, killing at least six people, police said. The attackers targeted an old section of Bayero University's campus where religious groups use a theater to hold worship services, Kano state police spokesman Ibrahim Idris said. The assault left many others seriously wounded, Idris said. "By the time we responded, they entered (their)

I DID NOT make all of my best personal choices at age 20, so I'm loath to place too much blame on the Penn State students who decided, Wednesday night, that their love for Joe Paterno was greater than their horror at the atrocities he overlooked in the football-building showers. Suffice it to say that this will probably not be one of the stories they tell their grandkids: "Yeah, I remember that night I pushed over a van because my college fired a football coach who coddled a child molester.

ONSET -- Some of the 20 men and boys have come to temple in traditional dark suits and ties. Others bow to the July steam outside, wearing seersucker or open-necked shirts or going sans jacket. This town does snuggle with Buzzards Bay, a place where in the summer as many people worship the sun as worship the Almighty. But the temple-goers all reverently bob forward during the benedictions of Friday afternoon prayer, just before sunset ushers in the Sabbath. Congregation Beth Israel is open only in summer (and briefly in fall for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana)

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things. G.K. Chesterton

By Peter Abraham, Globe Staff Now it's clear why Theo left Boston. We weren't willing to worship him like a deity.

In today’s America, sex and religion are often seen in opposition to each other, and there’s a long history of that battle, from the Puritans to the Protestant establishment’s investment in antiobscenity laws. But for some on the vanguard of the progressive era, freedom meant mingling of sexual and spiritual expression. Ida C. Craddock, writer, lecturer, sometime pastor and counselor, was among what her biographer calls “an advanced band of troublemaking inquirers,” a freethinker who “imagined a sexual revolution in specifically sacred terms.” Her work and life are barely...

An Ecumenical Service of Worship at the United Church of Christ, 10 Bedford St., will be held next Sunday at 7 p.m. as part of a continuing celebration of the town's approaching tricentennial on June 10. The church's music director, Doug Ulwick, has organized the event to include anyone who enjoys singing and would be interested in joining in with the choir for the historic celebration. Abington became incorporated nearly 300 years ago after meeting a gubernatorial request that the town establish a church with an ordained minister.

As the parent of a son who passed away 14 years ago, at 41, from melanoma, I see no humor whatsoever in Jennifer Graham's April 21 op-ed "End the war on sun. " I question the taste of your editorial staff. There are more than 10,000 people who will die from skin cancer each year in the United States, and more than 2 million who will be diagnosed with it. That the sun is our friend is a huge piece of misinformation. That California has politicians who have shown the responsibility and guts to have passed a law that prevents minors from going to tanning parlors speaks to how...

By Peter Abraham, Globe Staff Now it's clear why Theo left Boston. We weren't willing to worship him like a deity.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things. G.K. Chesterton

WASHINGTON - President Obama and his family celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a Sunday worship service, as the legacy of the civil rights leader was remembered at events across the country. Obama, his wife, Michelle, and daughters Sasha and Malia sat in the second row of Washington's Zion Baptist Church as the church commemorated King's 83rd birthday, which is officially observed today. A program for the service bore a photo of King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the words "I Have a Dream.

I DID NOT make all of my best personal choices at age 20, so I'm loath to place too much blame on the Penn State students who decided, Wednesday night, that their love for Joe Paterno was greater than their horror at the atrocities he overlooked in the football-building showers. Suffice it to say that this will probably not be one of the stories they tell their grandkids: "Yeah, I remember that night I pushed over a van because my college fired a football coach who coddled a child molester.

** MACHINE GUN PREACHER Directed by: Marc Forster Written by: Jason Keller Starring: Gerard Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon, Souleymane Sy Savane At: Kendall Square Running time: 127 minutes Rated: R (violent content including disturbing images, language, some drug use, and a scene of sexuality) "Machine Gun Preacher" is crude and ham-handed from its ridiculous title on down, but it still gets to some interesting places. Based on the life of Sam Childers, a Pennsylvania biker who found God and became a Christian warrior for...

Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith By Suzanne Strempek Shea Beacon, 311 pp., $24.95If you have painful childhood memories of being dragged to church Sunday after Sunday when you really wanted to be at the playground, be warned that "Sundays in America" might trigger nightmares. Suzanne Strempek Shea engaged voluntarily in what you were forced to do. She worshiped at 50 different churches, week in and week out, albeit with more commitment than your parents imposed on you: She left her home in Western Massachusetts and crisscrossed the country to sample denominations.

Senior pastor Jeramie Rinne stood on the back of a flatbed truck outside the South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham last Sunday, silhouetted against the blue sky, the sun reflecting off the newly expanded white building and onto hundreds of upturned faces. "Open, you ancient doors," Rinne began. "So that He of the Glory may come in," the crowd finished with him. The speech marked the beginning to an end of a decade-long, often contentious campaign to expand the footprint of the Main Street church, whose population doubled in recent decades.