and in cemeteries:

The symbol is a sort of monogram or shorthand meaning “Christ,” and is formed from the first two letters of that word in Greek (“ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ″). Those first two letters are, respectively, Chi (Χ) and Rho (Ρ).

The letter Chi is pronounced “key” or “khee.” It is a “ch” sound, as in chorus or charisma or the Scottish loch. Rho normally represents an “r” sound, except at the beginning of a word. There, Greek expects a breathy sort of sound, which is indicated with an “h” and is why English has hard-to-spell words like “rhythm” and “rhapsody” and “rhinoceros.”

This symbol is (very imaginatively) called the “Chi Rho,” from the two Greek letters from which it is formed. As the 2nd picture shows, the “Chi Rho” symbol often appears with two other Greek letters, the “Alpha” (Α) and the “Omega” (Ω) used to describe Jesus in Revelation 1:8. Although it’s made of two disctinct letters, the “Chi Rho” is a symbol in its own right, and has its own Unicode value and everything! (U+2627, ☧)

Anyway, I mention it because we’re headed into what is now often called the “Holiday Season.” On the increasingly rare occasions when the name of the holiday appears, it is written as “X-mas” rather than “Christmas.”

I’ve known people who got all bent out of shape over the “X” in “X-mas” as if it were somehow demeaning to Christ to use an abbreviation. But as these ancient monograms show, the “Chi” (along with the “Rho”) is actually an perfectly legitimate symbol for Christ. There’s nothing demeaning about it. But call it “Khee-mas” instead of “eks-mas” if you want to be an egghead about it!

So what am I sharing? How about an analysis of church names in the United States?

Until today, Desert Hills has had a great wooden box in the front of the sanctuary. I’m sure it looked like a table to the person who built it, but for the rest of us…well, table cloths and squinting were just barely enough to maintain the illusion. No more. You’d know this was a table even if you were blindfolded!

The word “catholic” means “universal” or “entire.” It comes from a Greek word that means “according to the whole.” Unlike “orthodox,” this word actually appears in Scripture, where members of the high priest’s party examine the disciples and order them not to testify about Jesus:

So they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

The word that eventually became “catholic” is translated here as “at all.” The only place in Scripture where this word occurs is here in Acts 4:18.

If that verse were the only place Christians used the word catholic, it wouldn’t matter. But of course it isn’t. Most of the time, when American Protestants say “catholic” they’re referring to the Roman Catholic Church. This is reasonable, as 95% of “Catholics” are members of the Church of Rome, and only 5% belong to the 22 Eastern Catholic churches.

But at the same time, Protestants assert their own catholicity.If, as Scripture attests, the church is the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 4:12), or the bride of Christ (Revelation 19:6-8), then there can be only one Church. And if there is only one Church, then the Church must extend geographically to include the entire world, and chronologically to include its members in every age.

When we look around, however, we see lots of churches. In the U.S. alone, there are about 300,000 Protestant local congregations. If there is only one Church there are only two possible explanations. First, it could be that my church is the authentic church, and all the others are impostors, including the ones I attended before I came here. The other possibility is that the churches are interconnected and thus a single church in reality despite the appearance to the contrary.

A few people have planted their flag on the first hill, but most Christians have preferred the latter. This is an easier choice for most Americans, since we don’t belong to a continuously-operating church in Jerusalem or one of the other churches mentioned in the New Testament. Instead, most of us acknowledge our church isn’t the only expression of the one Authentic Church. Nevertheless, we argue that our church is one of the constituent parts of that True Church.

What, then, is the nature of that invisible strand that connects our church with the other parts of the Authentic Church? I’ll write about that in my next post.

The headline (“Fewer members = smaller congregations”) says what might be the most disturbing thing about our decline. The average congregation has dropped in size from 268 in 1983 to 152 today. In the same period, the median size of a congregation has declined from 195 to 97.

Fully half of our congregations (mine among them) have 100 or fewer members–and that’s members, not worship attenders. God is still in heaven, and Jesus fed a multitude with just five loaves and two fishes, but even so, how many of those congregations are financially viable?

The first is the discovery of a new type of bacteria in Mono Lake not far from here in California. What makes it unique (compared to every other type of life on earth) is that it has DNA, but the “ladder” structure of the helix is formed using atoms of arsenic instead of the phosphorus used in the DNA in you and me and whatever we had for dinner. This is truly amazing, and raises profound questions about evolution. What does it mean that a nontrivial molecule like DNA can either (a) evolve twice, or (b) evolve once, but then survive such a profound alteration? (Interestingly, one of the scientists involved is Paul Davies, who won the Templeton Prize in 1995.)

The second interesting article is a reassessment of the number of stars in the universe. I’m always fascinated by this sort of thing, even when it’s just pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. But consider this for a moment:

“We may have to abandon this notion of using the Milky Way as a template for the rest of the universe,” Dr. van Dokkum said.

Ouch! That had to smart. Copernicus proposed that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than the reverse. Since then, it’s been a matter of (ahem) faith among scientists that there’s nothing at all exceptional about us or our place in the universe. But we keep finding exceptions to that rule.

Updated (Dec. 10): apparently there are serious flaws in the study that purported to find evidence of arsenic-based DNA. I tried to read Rosie Redfield’s article, but about halfway down the page it got too dense for me to understand. There’s a point waiting to be made here about the responsibility of the science press not to hype things until they’ve been subjected to proper peer review, because people like me just aren’t as scientific as Rosie Redfield and Paul Davies.

Most young people in Britain consider Christianity irrelevant to their lives but they are not as hostile towards religion as their parents’ generation, researchers in the Church of England have found.

That seems like a good thing. The church has historically had to deal with both indifference and hostility, but indifference doesn’t have to work as hard to become curiosity. Especially since Christianity is offering answers to questions that matter:

… while Generation Y is largely unfamiliar with formal religion, it still takes a keen interest in ethical issues.

“The young people drew moral guidance from family as friends, but they also recognized the potential of religion, including Christianity, to provide them with guidelines for living,” she said.