Geoff W. Sutton Blog

Why Do American Christians Ham it up on Easter? I never had ham on Easter until I was a guest at American homes. As an English immigrant, my parents kept up the tradition of roast lamb, potatoes, veggies and mint sauce. Hot cross buns are traditional but those in the U.S. have a different texture-- I don’t know enough about baking to say more. Hershey’s chocolate eggs were pretty good but not quite the same as Cadbury’s . Fortunately, I’m not too discriminating when it comes to milk chocolate ( BBC link ). But the ham- why ham? It seems so in-your-face wrong. Obviously Jesus was a Jew as were his disciples. Surely they ate lamb at the Last Supper. And celebrating Jesus resurrection with a lamb just seems right. By eating ham, Christians might make it clear that Jews and Muslims aren’t welcome to this Christian meal. If you search the web for Easter foods, you’ll find lots of references to that blend of pagan “Easter” traditions celebrating an old Anglo-Sax...

Hope Shines a Light Hope Wins Have you ever look forward to an event and found it to be even better than expected? Hope is about expectations. High levels of hope represent a combination of plans and motivation directed at reaching a goal. A group of us are looking at the effectiveness of Christian counseling from the perspective of people who have recently attended counseling sessions. As we continue to collect data, one finding stands out­­—those with high levels of hope appear healthier on a variety of measures. What is hope? Hope is a positive motivational action schema. The two components of hope work in tandem to help people achieve goals. According to hope theory developed by C.R. Snyder and his colleagues at the University of Kansas, hope consists of two components: agency and pathways. Pathways are the routes or ways people develop to achieve their goals. For example, a person may enroll in college to obtain a degree on the path to a career in c...