Features
Infallible preachers: The mullahs in Pakistan
Mullahs in the corner of Pakistan where I live tend to be brilliant orators. They usually speak extemporaneously for an hour before Friday prayers. They can be persuasive, humorous, conciliatory, prayerful or bellicose. Frequently they break into song or weep for the sins of their tribe, and they hold their audiences spellbound, displaying a masterful use of repartee and the timing of a stand-up comic. They can move listeners from tears to laughter in the time it takes you to fold your turban.
'Allah is my Lord and yours' Talking with Ahmadinejad: Talking with Ahmadinejad
Yes, the letter written by President Ahmadinejad of Iran to President Bush last spring is a political document, and is no doubt duplicitous, multilayered and deliberately deceptive. Yet the letter, framed as an address by one believer in God to another, received little sensible comment in the American media. Suppose the appeal to Bush to take his Christianity seriously is at least in part genuine. Can we American Christians hear this appeal?
Rise and fall
Steve Zaillian’s adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel All the King’s Men, about the making of a demagogue—modeled on Louisiana governor (and later senator) Huey Long—is languid, undramatic and shapeless. Zaillian has a talent for streamlining big, incident-filled books. He wrote the screenplay for Schindler’s List and both wrote and directed A Civil Action. But in this case his love for the novel seems to have done him in.
Books
Evangelical reformer
Michael Kazin, a scholar of U.S....
Bellwether preacher
There is something very familiar about The Most Famous Man in America....
Beyond 'taboo morality'
To read the papers or watch the news, one would think that sex and gender are the only issues facing Christians today....
A life interrupted
This book documents a life interrupted....
Neighborhood saint
When i finished this book I wanted to read it all over again. It’s that kind of work....
Shaped by the '70s
Only in retrospect do most people come to believe that they have lived through a historic moment....
Take and read
Allison extends his earlier Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet with a series of essays...
Take and read
African Christianity: An African Story. Edited by Ogbu Kalu. Department of Church History, University of Pretoria, 631 pp. ...
Take and read
A retired Fuller Seminary professor, Anderson seeks to infuse the Emergent movement with an Emergent theology, drawing on Paul’s teachi...
Tutu's story
Americans have sometimes seen the campaign against South African apartheid as a reprise of their own civil righ...
Departments
Autumn lament: The liturgical calendar and the baseball calendar
For those of us who measure time not only by the liturgical calendar but by the baseball season, fall is a time to reflect on what happened or did not happen....
Making amends: A forum for dialogue and resolving conflicts
A slip of the tongue or an off-the-cuff remark is one thing; words used in a carefully prepared speech to a university audience are another....
Dreams and strategies: Cultivating institutions in service to the gospel
"What keeps you up at night?” I asked the African cardinal at the end of a leisurely lunch near his home....
Fudging: Do we lie about sitting in the pew?
According to a recent Bloomberg News survey, researchers for the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine asked people to answer two easy questions: How tall are you? How much do you weigh?...
News
'Tongues' resurfaces as Southern Baptist issue: Seminary professor requests reconsideration
Controversy is again brewing in the Southern Baptist Convention over the practice of speaking in tongues....
Vatican ousts rogue African archbishop: Milingo excommunicated after installing married bishops
The Vatican on September 26 announced the excommunication of African archbishop emeritus Emmanuel Milingo as a penalty for his having installed four married men as Roman Catholic bishops two days before....
Pope Benedict meets with Muslim leaders: Calls for "authentic dialogue"
In an unprecedented meeting with Muslim envoys on September 25, Pope Benedict XVI called for “authentic dialogue” between religions and cultures....
Briefly noted
In a series of nationwide protests, a number of religious leaders have risked arrest by partaking in acts of civil disobedience in an effort to inspire a mass mobilization of people of faith against the Iraq war....
Century Marks
Take this to court: People who think the Ten Commandments should be displayed in public places have a new option: having them tattooed on their arms or other visible places on their bodies. Check out the religious tattoos at www.religioustattoos.net.
Kerry belatedly speaks of faith: Joins other Democrats in describing impact on political visions
John Kerry, reticent about his religious beliefs during his losing 2004 presidential campaign against George W. Bush, poured out his testimony last month—not to fellow Catholics but to an evangelical audience in Malibu, California....
Calvin Seminary's first female professor quits, charging bias: Calls her experience a nightmare
Six years after her groundbreaking appointment, the first full-time female professor at Calvin Theological Seminary has resigned, alleging sex discrimination at the Christian Reformed Church school for ministers....
California Episcopal church defies IRS: Takes stand to defend freedom of pulpits
After consultation with the congregation, clergy and legal counsel, the governing board of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, on September 21 voted unanimously (26-0) “to challenge legally, and in a court of law,” the right of th...
Black churches prove cool to federal grants: Tiny fraction receive monies to aid poor
Only a tiny fraction of black churches have received money to help the poor as a result of the Bush administration’s federal faith-based initiative, and most of those tend to be liberal in their theology and located in the Northeast....
Gardner Taylor still a preaching exemplar: Among America's greatest contemporary pulpiteers
He’s 88 years old and technically retired. But Gardner C. Taylor still shows the preaching skills that have placed him on virtually every list of America’s greatest contemporary preachers....
More WCC members now paying dues: Overall financial situation described as positive
Three-quarters of the World Council of Churches’ 348 member bodies paid their membership contributions in 2005, compared with 55 percent in 1999, the main governing body of the world’s biggest church grouping reports....
Americans United files first suit challenging a U.S. faith-based grant: Question government money spent for religious purposes
A national watchdog group has filed its first lawsuit to halt a federal government faith-based grant—in this case, to a Washington state program that offers Bible-based marriage workshops....
Lectionary
Sons of Entitlement: Mark 10:35-45
James and John McZebedee matriculated at my seminary again this fall. The “Sons of Entitlement,” I call them. They are usually—but not always—young and white in addition to being male. They have typically grown up in the church, attended Christian colleges and majored in religion. They like to refer to their mental index of Theologians Worth Reading and readily scoff at those theologians they have not read (and so are not worth reading).
Upside-down world (Mark 10:35-45)
This portion of the narrative is a continuation and expansion of what has just preceded. The other ten disciples are jealous, are angry with James and John because they have pushed Jesus—successfully—to give them a preeminent share in his destiny. Jesus has not criticized or dismissed their insistent demand but has lovingly transformed it from a desire for glory into a willingness to suffer. Still, why should some of the disciples be granted privileges over the rest?