Magazine /

January 23, 2007

Volume 124, Issue #2
All back issues ›

Features

Feature

Baptist universities face watershed changes: Bach at Old West Church

(for Anne Kazlauskas)

by Sarah M. Brownsberger
Feature

Barnyard dance: Farming that honors animals

America’s food production system is killing us. It relies on the use of fossil fuels, chemicals, growth hormones and antibiotics, and on production and farming practices that erode the soil and deplete the groundwater.An entirely different approach to food production can be glimpsed at Polyface Farm in central Virginia, where Joel Salatin’s Christian faith informs the way he farms and, to the best of his ability, honors the animals.
by Norman Wirzba
Feature

Biblical therapy: Southern Baptists reject "pastoral counseling"'

It was not a big surprise in 2005 when Southern Baptist Theological Seminary announced that it was making a “wholesale change” in its counseling program. The Louisville school, flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, declared that it was jettisoning the “pastoral counseling” model in favor of “biblical counseling.”

The switch was foreshadowed three years earlier when Southern’s dean coauthored a resolution at the SBC’s annual convention on “The Sufficiency of Scripture in a Therapeutic Culture.”

by David Winfrey
Cover Story

Advice and dissent: An address at West Point

Bill Moyers delivered the Sol Feinstone Lecture on "The Meaning of Freedom” at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, on November 15, 2006. The following is an excerpt.

by Bill Moyers
Film

Parallel universe

The year: 1944. The place: a makeshift military encampment in the verdant countryside outside of Madrid, where a company of Spanish soldiers is methodically eliminating the few remaining resistance fighters trying to topple the fascist government of General Franco. The resistance fighters are fueled by the belief that with the landing on D-Day, the Americans will take down Franco as well as Hitler. They are wrong.

By John Petrakis

Books

Enough already

...
By Valerie Weaver-Zercher

Us, them and the Crusades

When Pope Benedict XVI recently quoted a 14th-century emperor who claimed that Islam’s singular contribution to the world was the doctrin...
By Timothy Mark Renick

Mysteries of the Middle Ages

At the beginning of the third section of Mysteries of the Middle Ages...
reviewed by Sharan Newman

Slow Man/Philosophy Made Simple

How do two agnostic men—unsure of the existence of God and with no religious affiliation—deal with the coming of old age, disab...
reviewed by Trudy Bush

The Politics of Jesus

Like many of us, Obery Hendricks Jr....
reviewed by Eugene H. Winkler

Departments

Editor's Desk

True patriot: A voice of reason and common sense

During the height of the Vietnam War, Bill Moyers was President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary. It was his responsibility to explain to the press and the world what was happening and why the U.S. was doing what it was doing....
by John Buchanan
From the Editors

Life on the outside: A departure from get-tough-on-crime

Melvin Bailey spent five years in prison for selling drugs. After he got out of prison, he did what most ex-offenders do: he returned to his neighborhood and looked for work....
Faith Matters

Grandma McCann's neighborhood: Hungering for community and care

I was reared just a few miles from the University of Chicago on the city’s South Side. As a kid riding past, I was certain that its buildings were haunted....
by Robert M. Franklin
Impressions

Film picks: Recommended movies from 2006

The Nativity Story’s Christmas card tableau evokes every nativity performance we have ever seen. But there is no triteness, sentimentality or forced piety in it because we have met this couple in the grimy reality of their village, in the crowded streets of Jerusalem and on the rocky paths to Bethlehem. We know that they are carrying out a difficult assignment, and that their hardest work is still ahead: they have to raise this infant to adulthood. Along with the familiar, The Nativity Story delivers unexpected moments that inform and inspire.
by James M. Wall
M.E.M.O.

Let them grunt: Showering cheap grace on sweating sinners

When I was young I spent two summers “icing” refrigerated cars on Burlington trains. We shuttled, shirtless, atop railroad cars under the Sioux City sun to the 16-degree ice-making room, from which we dragged out 300-pound cakes of ice....
by Martin E. Marty

News

Reuniting Reformed churches would stir discord, study says: Leaders urge continuing increase in shared works

The two sisters grew up worshiping in the same church. Today, they feel like they still are—despite being in different denominations....

Church growth keys: Multiracial, happy, more males active: Study notes factors in decline or expansion

Congregations interested in increasing their weekly attendance would do well to make a plan for recruiting new members, become multiracial and make sure that serious conflict doesn’t take root....

Mormons agree to no LDS proxy baptism of Simon Wiesenthal: As requested by Jewish human rights organization

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints removed the name of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal from a list of those to be posthumously baptized, after the organization bearing his name issued a statement calling for the re...

Williams: Iraq War moves were "flawed." Criticizes "short-sighted" policies

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, conceding that he wonders whether he should have been more involved in the antiwar movement, in a radio interview attacked the decision by the U.S....

Saddam's execution decried by WCC, Rome. Punishing "a crime with another crime": Punishing "a crime with another crime"

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches, a body that opposes the death penalty, asked God to grant Iraq “the mercy, justice and compassion that it has long been denied” and “an end to the fear and death that marked Saddam Hussein’s ...

People

Billy Graham has been named in the Gallup Poll’s top 10 “most admired men” list for a record 50th time. In a poll taken in mid-December, the 88-year-old evangelist came in fifth. Ranked before him, in order, were President George W....
Century Marks

Century Marks

High calling: When Harris Interactive took its annual poll in 2006 measuring the prestige granted different professions, the top three were firefighters, doctors and nurses. Clergy came in eighth, behind scientists, teachers, military officers and police officers. Ministers have declined in prestige only 1 percentage point since 1977, when the survey began. Firefighters weren’t even included in the survey before 2003 (Calling, Winter).

A healing president and devoted Episcopalian: Ford's "care-filled ministry" gratefully recognized

Former President Gerald R....
by John Dart

Gay marriage setback in Massachusetts: Legislative move could put ban on 2008 ballot

In a surprise move, Massachusetts legislators took a first step toward banning same-sex marriages in the first and only state to make them legal....

Latinos moving away from Catholicism: Evangelicals, Pentecostals have increasing numbers

The bongo drums and keyboard at Iglesia El Shaddai, a Pentecostal church in Elizabeth, New Jersey, are being played so briskly that they could support a conga line....

Lectionary

It's about God: Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Last fall a friend of mine attended a lecture at the University of Mississippi delivered by Stanley Hauerwas. His talk was followed by an invigorating, hour-long question-and-answer dialogue. My friend reported that afterward he and some students, another minister and several laypeople went to someone’s house and talked about God for another hour or so. How novel.
by Kyle Childress

Rest assured: Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; Luke 6:17-26

by Kyle Childress

Free Newsletters

From theological reflections to breaking religion news to the latest books, the Christian Century's newsletters have you covered.

Explore Newsletters