Features
Moving down in the world: Called to a smaller place
Recently I was called from a larger church to a smaller church. It's not the usual order of things.
Acquainted with grief: The church’s way with death
Regular churchgoing does not make you a friend of death. But if you sit in the pews long enough, you cannot help getting acquainted.
Culture changers: David Hollinger on what the mainline achieved
"Ecumenical leaders of the 1960s took a series of risks," says historian David Hollinger, "asking their constituency to follow them in directions that many resisted."
River revival: Can the Jordan roll again?
The Jordan River is too shallow for Michael to row across, and the shore is a stinking pile of sludge. But something redemptive is happening.
I Wish and Moonrise Kingdom
In cinema, children generally represent wisdom. Their innocence suggests a mind and spirit that has not yet been polluted by anger, disappointment, jealousy, greed, bitterness or any of the other flaws and foibles that accumulate as we turn the corner from adolescence to adulthood.
Books
Church as problem and solution
Diana Butler Bass's new book is warm and winsome. But it lacks the particularizing power of her earlier work's grounding in stories about specific communities and people.
How to Read the Qur’an, by Carl W. Ernst
In the decade since 9/11, it seems as though every trade publisher and university press has brought forth a guide to the Qur’an for the perplexed. Carl Ernst eschews the usual method for books of this sort.
Unclean, by Richard Beck
A man stumbled into church drunk and bleeding from his hand. "I have hepatitis C," he said. I remembered this as I read Richard Beck's book Unclean.
Departments
The clash that wasn’t
Somehow, newspapers never publish banner headlines announcing "World's Largest Muslim State Fails to Persecute Christians."
Images from The Gospel of John, Photographed
In 2010, David Kevin Weaver traveled to Israel with camera in hand, seeking to trace the life and journey of Jesus....
Courage to compromise
Richard Lugar symbolizes something great but fragile about the American system of government: it relies on partisanship tempered by wisdom.
Women at risk
The question isn't whether the new provisions in the Senate VAWA bill are politically motivated. It's whether the provisions are good ones.
News
Ex-nun offers tips for supporting Catholic sisters
A national official for the United Church of Christ says she applauds the courage of the large group of U.S. Catholic nuns under heavy criticism from the Vatican....
SBC elects first black president
Pointing heavenward and wiping away tears, pastor Fred Luter was elected in New Orleans as the first black president of the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention....
Unchurched are key bloc in Washington State’s vote on gay marriage
Conservatives in Washington State have claimed victory by collecting double the signatures needed to send the state’s same-sex marriage law to voters in this year’s general election....
Forced abortion case stirs outrage in China
The case of the pregnant woman who was dragged to a hospital by authorities and forced to have an abortion has enraged the Chinese and sparked an online flurry of debate over whether it is time to end China’s draconian one-child family planning po...
Supreme Court tosses case of ‘Christian candy cane’
An appeal over Christmas sweets turned bitter in June when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the so-called “Christian candy cane” case....
Catholic theologians stand up to the Vatican
Over the past 50 years, the practice of thinking theologically in the Roman Catholic Church has slowly shifted from a practical craft to train the next generation of clerics to a wider field of study that employs perspectives from across the schol...
Conservative Jews’ shift on gay rites causes no stir
The Conservative Jewish movement established guidelines in early June for the marriage of gay and lesbian couples. The reaction so far? Hard to find....
Stuttering doesn’t stop a call to ministry
Tom Sherrod, an ordained United Methodist minister, loathed to “declare” a couple man and wife....
Lectionary
Sunday, July 22, 2012: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Jesus listens patiently to the disciples. Then he tucks them in for a nap.