Features
Lending with grace: Breaking the cycle of payday loans
Predatory lenders often exact fees at a rate equivalent to an annual rate of 300 to 800 percent. Grace Period offers an alternative.
A hopeful universalism
God's "consuming fire" is the fire of holy love. It doesn't await sinners in the future; it burns up sin itself.
Dark Shadows
Dark Shadows, Tim Burton’s film of the popular camp-gothic soap opera from the ’60s and early ’70s, is silly and over the top. But it has a marvelous, billowing look, and it’s quite entertaining.
Hard choices in Egypt: Will Christians vote for the old regime?
In a runoff election for president, Christians are stuck between the rock of Mubarak's prime minister and the hard place of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A foundation for relationships: Ministry in the 21st century
"More than ever, people are building interfaith marriages," says Joyce Shin of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. "Too often, religion is seen as an impediment to this instead of as a resource."
The end of impunity? The International Criminal Court issues a verdict: The International Criminal Court issues a verdict
After ten years, the ICC has convicted someone: Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. But why does the court only investigate situations in Africa?
Marvel’s The Avengers
Writer-director Joss Whedon, the creator of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, saves the world from destruction yet again in the first of the summer blockbusters, Marvel’s The Avengers. The adventure is moderately enjoyable but rather exhausting.
Books
Saint Sinatra and Other Poems, by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell
Angela O'Donnell's sassy poems are born of her deeply Catholic imagination. She builds a house of saints, canonized or not.
Apocalyptic visions
Elaine Pagels's book repeats a winning formula: contrast the canon's controversial parts with more appealing Gnostic selections.
Flourishing Life, by Sandra M. Levy-Achtemeier
In readable fashion Levy-Achtemeier explores what it means for humans to flourish....
The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker says human beings are becoming less violent. But his larger point seems to be that everyone should think like he does.
The World’s Christians, by Douglas Jacobsen
The term world Christianity has been widely used since the publication of Philip Jenkins’s 2002 best seller The Next Christendom, but in popular usage it has tended to refer only to Christianity in the Global South. Though courses on world Christianity have proliferated, no one until Douglas Jacobsen has taken the care to delineate the contours of the entire global movement.
Wounded I Am More Awake, by Julia Lieblich and Esad Boskailo
After enduring a Croatian concentration camp in 1993, where he was brutalized by his own neighbors, Boskailo came to Chicago with his family and tried to restart his life....
Departments
Grace before anything
Since childhood, I've been uncomfortable with the idea that accepting Jesus is an automatic ticket to heaven—and with the reverse idea.
Future fatigue
The 1939 World's Fair's vision was whipped to a froth through wishful thinking. Church leaders should probe the future with more humility.
Animals in the kingdom
I am confident that the new creation will include animals. I hope that it will include Merle, my deceased smooth-coat collie.
Liberty imperiled? The Catholic bishops' argument is weak
First the bishops sought an expanded exemption. Now they claim the contraception mandate itself violates religious liberty. It doesn't.
News
Bible scholars back more critical studies of Qur’an
The Society of Biblical Literature, the largest international body of scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and related texts, hopes to assist experts on the Qur’an in creating an independent body for fostering research on Islam’s h...
Vatican censures nun’s book on sexual ethics
A long-simmering conflict between the Vatican and American nuns has erupted again with the Vatican’s doctrinal office issuing a scathing critique of a popular book on sexual ethics by Sister Margaret A....
Nuns rap Vatican for ‘unsubstantiated’ charges
Leaders representing most of the nation’s 57,000 Catholic nuns answered a Vatican crackdown on their group by charging that Rome’s criticisms of the sisters were “unsubstantiated,” caused “scandal and pain” and “greater polarization” in the church...
Richard Land loses show, keeps his leadership job
A top Southern Baptist official who was accused of plagiarism in a radio segment claiming that civil rights leaders and President Obama used the Trayvon Martin case to stir racial tensions has lost his weekly call-in program but can keep his main ...
Atheists, believers do good for different reasons
Atheists and others who don’t adhere to a religion often say they can be good without God. Now three new studies appear to back them up....
How ‘pro-life’ is dissident Chen Guangcheng?
When blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng made a daring escape from house arrest this spring and found refuge in the U.S....
Churches more wary of partisan politics
With the 2012 election less than six months away, congregations are getting the message that Americans want religion out of politics. But that doesn’t mean they plan to keep mum in the public square....