Features
Shared lives: The challenges of friendship
Christians think differently about friendship. Our understanding is rooted in a God who never writes us out of the story of divine love—whatever our failings.
Captain America: The First Avenger
The latest of the Marvel comic book movies is smooth sailing from start to finish.
The liberal agony: Why there was no new New Deal
In 2008, both enthusiasts and enemies of a new New Deal misjudged Obama. They also misjudged the circumstances he faced.
You can’t make this up: The limits of self-made religion
If we got all these spiritual-not-religious people together, they might find out that most of America agrees with them. But getting them together would be way too much like church.
The peaceable senator: Mark O. Hatfield, 1922–2011
In the midst of today's rancorous politics and the
trivialization of religion in the public square, the death of Mark O. Hatfield calls to mind a different kind of political style and a different
kind of Christian witness.
Books
Unexpected Destinations, by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
What do you get when you take an attractive, intelligent kid born into a loving, happy, Midwestern family and relinquish him for baptism, telling him he is now "engaged to profess Christ"?...
Portrait of a nation
Sociologist Claude Fischer is unhappy with historians' failure to provide a
grand narrative of American history.
Transforming Scriptures, by Katherine Clay Bassard
Katherine Clay Bassard's book on the use of scripture by African-American women writers begins with Balaam's
ass and the Song of Songs. One is compelled to keep reading.
A Sunlit Absence, by Martin Laird
It is not easy to do more than pay lip service to the scriptural call "Be still and know that I am God." As anyone who has tried with any regularity soon discovers, becoming still before God is not...
Departments
Where do you pray
Prayer is not something we do first and foremost on our own. We pray with other Christians.
Checkpoint
Why, the customs officer wanted to know, was I traveling to Canada just to preach? It was a question to ponder.
Presidential limits
Many aspects of governing exist outside the president's control, via rhetoric or anything else.
Tough conversations
It is difficult for Jews to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It's also difficult for Christians to talk about it with Jews.
News
Nearly 2,000 conservatives in PCUSA ponder options for mission, separation
The biggest news from a recent gathering of Presbyterians in Minnesota in the aftermath of approval by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to ordain qualified clergy who are openly gay was the unexpectedly large turnout—almost 2,000 clergy...
ELCA bishop ‘hopeful’ amid animosities, economy woes
At its previous churchwide assembly in 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided to allow ordination of gay clergy, closing a controversial chapter on gay rights even as U.S....
Report details funding that fuels Islamophobia
A small number of conservative foundations are propelling a handful
of anti-Islamic activists who are fueling rising levels of
Islamophobia, according to a report issued by the left-leaning Center
for American Progress....
Churches are losing the less educated
A recent study reports that white Americans without college degrees
are dropping out of church faster than their more highly educated
counterparts, and researchers are offering several possible
explanations....
Mexican Presbyterians cut ties to PCUSA over gays
The National Presbyterian Church of Mexico has voted to end its
139-year relationship with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in
response to the U.S. church's decision earlier this year to allow the...
Quake-damaged cathedral faces millions in repairs
The iconic Washington National Cathedral, already struggling with
financial problems, faces millions of dollars in repair costs from the
damage inflicted by an August 23 earthquake. And nothing is covered by...
Ill will toward Muslims remains ten years later
In a post-9/11 bid to better relations with Muslims, pastor Bob
Roberts invited Muslims to his NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, for
Q&A sessions and a cooking club and to help on a few home remodeling...
Faith talk losing appeal to voters
Has America gotten more religious, or is religiousness just a vocal
strain in American politics? The country has grown less religious since
the 1970s, according to recent studies, but researchers say that...
Civil rights vets: King memorial was long overdue
At age 93, famed preacher Gardner Taylor never thought he'd live to
see the day when his friend Martin Luther King Jr. would be honored with
a national memorial in Washington, D.C....