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    250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
    250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
    250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
    Ebook104 pages1 hour

    250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2

    By David Bruce

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    Some samples: 1) Preacher Will D. Campbell ministers to people who need to be ministered to. He was very active in the Civil Rights Movement, but he also ministers to Ku Klux Klan members. For both blacks and whites (even racist whites), he performs weddings and funerals. Kris Kristofferson, who even before he became famous knew Mr. Campbell, once visited Mr. Campbell’s office to ask him, “What the hell kind of place is this? You’ve got a preacher who marches with Dr. Martin Luther King and also ministers to members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’m a Rhodes scholar, and I don’t understand that.” Mr. Campbell replied, “Maybe the reason you don’t understand is that you’re a Rhodes scholar.” 2) Dr. Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, kept a strictly kosher diet. While in Paris, he and a group of rabbis ate only in kosher restaurants. On leaving Paris, Dr. Finkelstein joked, “I can’t understand all this fuss people make about French cooking. We have the same things at home.” 3) While staying in Scotland, Peg Bracken spoke with a woman who had once regularly received telephone calls from God. The first time it happened, she was going through a time of trouble—her husband had recently died, her son had broken a leg, she was worried about insurance, etc.—and a telephone call came for her in a place she had not told anyone she would visit. She answered the telephone, and a voice said, “This is God.” Of course, she asked, “God who?” The voice answered, “Your good friend God. I just want you to know you’re doing fine. And don’t you go worrying about Ritchie’s leg now. It’s going to be as good as new.” For six months, she received these mysterious telephone calls at least once a week. She never recognized the voice, and she never totally believed that God was speaking to her, although she didn’t want to totally disbelieve either. Once, she started to ask the telephone operator to trace the call, then she changed her mind. After six months, the telephone calls stopped, but things were going well for her and her family by then.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Bruce
    Release dateNov 20, 2011
    ISBN9781465757647
    250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
    Author

    David Bruce

    It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a cry rang out, and on a hot summer night in 1954, Josephine, wife of Carl Bruce, gave birth to a boy — me. Unfortunately, this young married couple allowed Reuben Saturday, Josephine’s brother, to name their first-born. Reuben, aka “The Joker,” decided that Bruce was a nice name, so he decided to name me Bruce Bruce. I have gone by my middle name — David — ever since. Being named Bruce David Bruce hasn’t been all bad. Bank tellers remember me very quickly, so I don’t often have to show an ID. It can be fun in charades, also. When I was a counselor as a teenager at Camp Echoing Hills in Warsaw, Ohio, a fellow counselor gave the signs for “sounds like” and “two words,” then she pointed to a bruise on her leg twice. Bruise Bruise? Oh yeah, Bruce Bruce is the answer! Uncle Reuben, by the way, gave me a haircut when I was in kindergarten. He cut my hair short and shaved a small bald spot on the back of my head. My mother wouldn’t let me go to school until the bald spot grew out again. Of all my brothers and sisters (six in all), I am the only transplant to Athens, Ohio. I was born in Newark, Ohio, and have lived all around Southeastern Ohio. However, I moved to Athens to go to Ohio University and have never left. At Ohio U, I never could make up my mind whether to major in English or Philosophy, so I got a bachelor’s degree with a double major in both areas, then I added a Master of Arts degree in English and a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy. Yes, I have my MAMA degree. Currently, and for a long time to come (I eat fruits and veggies), I am spending my retirement writing books such as Nadia Comaneci: Perfect 10, The Funniest People in Comedy, Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose. If all goes well, I will publish one or two books a year for the rest of my life. (On the other hand, a good way to make God laugh is to tell Her your plans.) By the way, my sister Brenda Kennedy writes romances such as A New Beginning and Shattered Dreams.

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      Book preview

      250 Anecdotes About Religion - David Bruce

      250 Anecdotes About Religion:

      Volume 2

      By David Bruce

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      Copyright 2010 by Bruce D. Bruce

      Cover Photograph:

      https://pixabay.com/photos/woman-bride-white-dress-veil-8337770/

      When any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour’s condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.

      — Abraham Lincoln.

      Chapter 1: From Age to Christmas

      Age

      • Author Michael Thomas Ford once spoke before a class of children. One child asked him, How old are you? When he gave the answer — 30 — he shocked the children, one of whom marveled, You’re older than my mom, and another of whom said, That’s old. Afterward, the children’s teacher explained that whenever the children asked her how old she was, I just tell them I knew God when he was a boy. That shuts them up — except for the ones who want to know if He was a good kickball player.

      • Pope John XXIII once traveled through a Roman tenement where some blankets covered billboards showing a very shapely Italian actress. The Pope noticed this and told the crowd, It is good that you do this, but you should realize that I am an old man, and if one of my age is thought to be scandalized by pictures like these, what of yourselves and your children?

      • In Haifa, a city in Israel, the walls of the subway cars have stenciled on them these words from Leviticus: You should rise up before the aged. In other words: When the subway car is crowded, get up and give your seat to an older person.

      Animals

      • Wesleyan pastor William Woughter was serving at a church called Buena Vista, located in a rural area near Bath, New York, when he retired. This church had the custom of giving the pastor the fruits of the earth on Harvest Day. One Sunday during harvest, the pastor would be kept out of the church until the farmers had brought in the good things of the earth as presents to the pastor. One Harvest Day, a man named Dean Stewart brought in a live turkey, which proceeded to gobble as Pastor William began his sermon. Pastor William looked at the turkey and said, If you don’t stop that noise, I will make you preach the rest of the sermon. The turkey stayed quiet until church was over.

      • The Jewish religious leader known as the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism) told this story to a rabbi who was too rigid and legalistic: I was driving a coach with three horses, none of which was neighing. I did not understand why until a peasant saw the horses and shouted at me to loosen the reins. When I loosened the reins, the horses immediately began to neigh. When the rabbi heard the story, he realized that souls must be free in order to sing — too many restrictions stifle the soul.

      Art

      • In 1843, Englishman Sir Henry Cole invented the illustrated Christmas card. He wanted to remind his friends to give to the needy during the holidays, so he commissioned an artist to create a scene of a family enjoying a holiday feast while ignoring needy people nearby. He then sent these cards to his friends.

      • Louise Nevelson created artworks for the Chapel of the Good Shepherd in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City. When a reporter asked the pastor why a Russian-born Jew had been picked to create works of art for a Christian chapel, he replied, Because she’s the greatest living American sculptor.

      Baptism

      • One winter, some Dunkers held an outdoors baptism, breaking the ice on a river to do so. After being baptized, one of the men was asked if the water had been cold. He replied, No, not a bit. The other man who had been baptized told the preacher, You better baptize him again, and hold him down a little longer. He hasn’t been cured of lying.

      • Max Weber, the sociologist, once saw a banker in the American South being baptized in a cold stream. When Mr. Weber asked what was happening, he was told that the banker was being baptized so that the people of the town would trust him and so do business with him.

      Bible

      • Many of us read the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, in which the Pharisee says, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as that publican [tax collector]. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. Unfortunately, when many of us read this, we think, Thank God that I am not as that Pharisee.

      • Ellen C. Waller, a Quaker, asked the children in her class to check and make sure that they had the Revised Version of the Bible, from which she was teaching. One child said that she had the wrong version of the Bible, because it wasn’t Revised — it was Holy.

      Birth

      • Elizabeth Cady Stanton once asked why this statement was read in the synagogue each week: I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a woman. She received the reply, It is not meant in an unfriendly spirit, and it is not intended to degrade or humiliate women. However, she was not satisfied with this answer, so she said, But it does, nevertheless. Suppose the service read, ‘I thank thee, O Lord, that I was not born a jackass.’ Could that be twisted in any way into a compliment to the jackass?

      • Si-tien, a Buddhist priest, asked some men, Which is more moving: the cries of an animal being killed, or the cries of a woman giving birth? No one answered, so Si-tien gave the answer: The cries of a woman giving birth. The cries of an animal being killed is an ending, but the cries of a woman giving birth is a beginning.

      Candles

      • New York Yankees Waite Hoyt and Joe Dugan went to church together one day, and Mr. Dugan lit a candle. That afternoon, he batted 3-for-4 and the next day he batted 4-for-5. Therefore, Mr. Waite went to a church and lit a huge number of candles. Unfortunately, he was a pitcher and the opposing team’s batters knocked him out of that day’s game in the third inning. Mr. Waite asked, How do you explain it? You lit candles and get a bunch of hits. I do the same thing and get knocked out. Mr. Dugan replied, Easy. I saw you light all those candles in church, but right after you left I saw two gamblers come in and blow them out.

      • Do you know the story behind the tradition of putting candles in windows during the Christmas season? This is an Irish tradition that stems from the days when the Catholic religion was persecuted. Catholic families longed to have a priest come to their house and celebrate Mass on Christmas. To help guide the priest to their house, they put a candle in the window.

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