New Testament scholar and archaeologist Edgar M. Krentz died on October 31. He was 93.
Krentz was perhaps best known for his 1975 book The Historical-Critical Method, which provided an introduction to and survey of historical criticism as a means of biblical interpretation. He was also a longtime professor at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, teaching his last class in 2018 despite retiring 20 years earlier.
Krentz’s interest in the historical-critical method began in 1963.
Thema Bryant-Davis, an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has been elected as the 2023 president of the American Psychological Association. Bryant-Davis currently directs the Culture and Trauma Research Lab at Pepperdine University, along with the mental health ministry at First AME Church in South Los Angeles.
This summer, Donald Ottenhoff, a former Century senior editor, retired from his position as executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. Ottenhoff led the institute, located on the property of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, for 17 years.
Ottenhoff is credited with expanding the institute beyond its original residential scholars program where, beginning in 1968, scholars could come to the campus for either a year or a semester of independent study, prayer, and ecumenical dialogue.
Religions for Peace’s deputy secretary general, Kyoichi Sugino, has resigned his position to take on the role of president of Gakurin Seminary, a lay Buddhist training institution in Tokyo. Sugino served in leadership at Religions for Peace for 23 years, becoming deputy secretary general in 2011.
As world leaders gathered for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, leaders of the world’s religions wanted to make sure the voices of indigenous peoples weren’t lost in the crowd.
The climate crisis cannot be solved without recognizing the rights and spiritualities of indigenous peoples, said religious leaders who gathered on November 3 for an official COP26 side event streamed online.
“They go together: We protect our lungs. We protect indigenous peoples,” said Azza Karam, secretary general of Religions for Peace.
In Rome and at the Vatican, President Joe Biden found a safe haven from the debates taking place back home, where some US bishops argue Catholic politicians should not be allowed to receive communion if they support abortion rights.
A pastor who had been locked out of the church she was appointed to lead in June preached for the first time from its pulpit on October 31. The lockout was allegedly due to her gender.
“God is still worthy to be praised,” preached Ratona Stokes-Robinson, pastor of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Thorofare, New Jersey, just south of Philadelphia. “And for the rest of my life I promise, no matter what I go through, I come to serve the Lord.”
For-profit businesses with sincerely held religious beliefs are exempt from LGBTQ discrimination liability under a decision by a federal judge in Texas. The October 31 ruling came in response to the US Supreme Court’s 2020 landmark ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Efforts to win the return of 17 members of a US-based missionary group and a local driver stretched on in late October, as a violent gang demanded $1 million ransom per person.
The individuals kidnapped on October 16 included five children age eight months to 15 years, although authorities were not clear whether the ransom demand included them, a top Haitian official said. Sixteen of the abductees are Americans, and one is Canadian.
The Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries said it would hold a day of fasting and prayer for its missionaries.
The National Council of Churches has elected an all-female slate of officers for the first time in the ecumenical organization’s 71-year history.
Teresa Jefferson-Snorton, leader of the Fifth Episcopal District of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, on October 13 became chair of the organization, starting a two-year term along with the other officers.