Features
Easter already: Living with the church calendar
In December, my Facebook friends and I voted to move Easter back to April, where it belongs. Yet here we are, already well into Lent.
The real Depression: The greatest generation needed welfare
Efforts to dismantle the U.S. welfare state rely on the myth of the redemptive Depression. It's an erasure and repackaging of a great crisis.
Waste not, hunger not: Daily Table sells fresh meals cheap
Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. ends up in landfills. Meanwhile, people are hungry. Daily Table tries to address both problems.
Love goes to work: Miracles in the midst of dying
The difference between sickness and health depends on the strength of the love at work. It wasn't until I met Mark that I began to understand this.
Books
Philosophy in Seven Sentences, by Douglas Groothuis
This book will not shatter paradigms or destabilize worldviews....
Full of emptiness
Emptiness can alternatively mean too little or too much. It is sometimes unclear where emptiness is distinct from excess.
Glimpses of Boko Haram
The history and struggles of the Nigerian movement known as Boko Haram are more complicated than they first appear.
Eight Questions of Faith, by Niles Elliot Goldstein
For Rabbi Goldstein, the Bible is “a complex, existential expression of uncertainty and confusion, of yearning and hope, of wonderment, suffering, and joy. . . ....
Do pollsters invent religion?
Do pollsters create what they purport to study? Wuthnow examines the power and limits of polls and surveys on American religion.
Faith makes us human
We wish something would prove beyond doubt that Someone obliged us large-brained, bipedal primates with a breath of consciousness.
Departments
Bedrock story
The exiled people of Judah turned to their stories—and found the belief that God would save them as before. Centuries later, Christians did the same.
Point of reference
Like Adam, we may end up treating God as if God were at the periphery. But where there is no center—or where we become the center—the circumference of life disappears.
Leading like Lydia
Do women plant churches differently than men? Do they use different methods or a different style?
Triptych of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, by Nicholas Froment
The Resurrection of Lazarus, a triptych from 1461, is the earliest documented work by the French Renaissance artist Nicolas Froment....
Battling wills
In Jessica Jones, the superhero villain's control over people is chilling because we recognize it. It plays out in ordinary abusive relationships.
When government fails
The scale of government means its failures can be big ones. But so can its successes.
News
Max Stackhouse, influential theologian and ethicist, dies at 80
Max L. Stackhouse, an influential theologian and social ethicist, died at the age of 80 at his home in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on January 30....
Larycia Hawkins, Wheaton College professor, reaches agreement with school
Larycia Hawkins, a professor at Wheaton College who faced termination from her tenured post at the evangelical school for publicly saying Christians and Muslims worship the “same God,” has announced in a joint statement with the college that she w...
Obama pleads for tolerance in first visit to U.S. mosque
In a time of rising Islamophobia, President Obama made a plea for religious tolerance during his first presidential visit to an American mosque....
Housing venture roils Union Seminary
A luxury housing construction project in the works at Union Theological Seminary could potentially save the school’s Upper Manhattan campus by raising more than $100 million for urgently needed renovations and repairs....
U.S. Jewish groups, Israel reach Western Wall deal
Several American Jewish groups celebrated a recent Israeli government decision to greatly expand—and fund—a pluralistic and egalitarian prayer section adjacent to the Western Wall plaza as a first step toward official Israeli recognition of non-Or...
Evangelists offer series through Netflix service
Alongside its popular television shows, Netflix recently began offering series by four pastors....
Morocco summit of scholars strives to improve Muslim treatment of minorities
After the Prophet Muhammad established the first Muslim state, he wrote the Charter of Medina to encourage harmony among people of different faiths....
Lord’s Resistance Army is reemerging in central Africa, warns Catholic bishop
A senior Roman Catholic bishop in the Central African Republic is warning that the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel force that killed more than 100,000 people in northern Uganda in the 1980s and ’90s, is rising up again in his country....
Paul Bhatti, Pakistani Christian, stands against blasphemy law
Paul Bhatti, a Roman Catholic, worked as a surgeon in Europe and in his home country of Pakistan....
Lectionary
March 20, Liturgy of the Palms: Luke 19:28-40
Preachers often struggle with Palm Sunday, and Jesus' entry into Jerusalem gets short shrift. But Palm Sunday is about more than a parade.
March 20, Liturgy of the Passion: Luke 22:14-23:56
Our culture's foundational sin is to make gods of ourselves, to find any excuse to go our own way rather than follow the Lord of life. We are weak. And yet in this Gospel story, so is Jesus.
March 13, Fifth Sunday in Lent: John 12:1-8
After the anointing at Bethany, Judas asks why the fragrance wasn't sold and the money given to charity. A more apt question might be why Mary didn't use it on her brother Lazarus, dead just a few days before.