Features
Asset management: How a building can serve a churchs mission
Buildings and grounds can be leveraged to support a church’s mission—and to extend its presence in the community.
A place for Camille: Blessings from a special-needs child
Calling my wife and me “special” suggests that there is an alternative—that it would have been acceptable to refuse to receive our child.
Between two worlds: Writer Claire Hajaj
“Two things about my own life became clear: I really did understand both sides, and I didn’t understand them at all.”
A long obedience: On marriage and other covenants
There are many people with whom I have not had an affair. Billions. There is also one man in particular.
Books
The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
For Elizabeth Kolbert, the human story reads like a Greek tragedy. Near the end, we realize too late that we brought about our own demise.
Visions of Amen, by Stephen Schloesser
Stephen Schloesser considers Olivier Messiaen and his music through the lens of a broad-based cultural history. This is fitting and welcome.
The world slavery made
Edward Baptist so powerfully captures the pain and tragedy of plantation slavery that I had to force myself to turn each page.
Faith Speaking Understanding, by Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Kevin Vanhoozer demonstrates that Christian thought is a more engaging, embodied affair than much that passes for thinking these days.
Mercy, by Walter Kasper
Walter Kasper contends that mercy is one of those words that we use without really grasping its profundity.
Departments
A letter to Thomas Merton
It’s been 100 years since your birth and almost 75 since you entered the abbey. You died with your story unfinished.
Christians in slavery
Many scholars have traced the intra-Christian conflicts over slavery. Less noticed are the situations in which Christians were themselves enslaved.
Joseph and Mary: Wedding Portrait, by Jim Larson
During Advent and Christmas, Christians hear stories of prophets, shepherds, night skies, angel announcements, a star, traveling Magi, and wanderers....
Sympathy for Pharaoh
Exodus: Gods and Kings has more in common with the 2004 sword-and-sandal disaster Alexander than with the other biblical epics of 2014.
Tortured ends and means
Reinhold Niebuhr once broke with the editor of this magazine to argue that moral responsibility requires resisting evil with force. It’s a compelling argument, but it doesn’t justify torture.
Cuba’s future
U.S. churches have long sought better relations with Christians in Cuba. The political thaw will make this much easier.
News
Barriers between Israel and Palestinian territory also block relationships
(The Christian Science Monitor) When Linda Casher moved to an Israeli collective near the Gaza Strip as a young American woman in the 1970s, she would often mingle with Palestinians at outdoo...
Pakistan struggles with how to regulate religious schools
The killing of 134 children in a Peshawar school renewed concerns about Pakistan’s unfinished agenda of uprooting militancy and intolerance....
Black churches may no longer be at center of civil rights protest
Half a century after civil rights movement activists marched across the South, the black church is finding new routes for activism....
South Sudan clergy stand up for peace
(The Christian Science Monitor) Wearing a white cassock, Catholic bishop Paride Taban strides through the mud and tents of the Jebel displaced persons camp in South Sudan’s ca...
Lectionary
Sunday, February 1, 2015: Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Idolatry seems like such an easy thing to avoid.
Sunday, January 25, 2015: 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Paul isn’t asking us to avoid the world. But if the form of the world is passing away, the everyday is becoming a step into promise.