Features
What's confirmation for? A rite needing revision
Perhaps instead of asking confirmands to confirm the vows made at their baptisms, members should confirm the vows they made to these teens at their baptisms—confirming the validity of those vows and the congregation’s love and commitment to them, no matter what the teens may believe at the moment or where life may take them. The candidates would be asked to receive the love of the congregation and a recommitment of what the congregation offered them at their baptisms. Even if the teens leave the church, as many will, those commitments would be like a light kept in the window until they are ready to return home.
How does Jesus save?
Looking back to history to find yet another approach to atonement will not solve the problem, but a reconsideration of the physical or mystical theory of how Christ saves us might contribute to more fruitful and civil conversation.
Seeds of doubt: Ikon's Peter Rollins
Peter Rollins is a prominent figure in the Emergent church movement in the United Kingdom. Schooled in philosophy, with several degrees from Queens University in Belfast, Rollins is determined to revitalize Christian practice with a peculiar blend of self-critical Christian practice and theory. He works with a group called Ikon, which engages in “anarchic experiments in transformance art” and holds “theodramatic” events in pubs and on the streets of Belfast.
The Soloist
The Soloist is a rarity—a triumph-of-the-spirit movie in which the hero's triumph is ambiguous. It's a movie about accepting small successes and living within your limits.
Books
Evangelical Disenchantment: Nine Portraits of Faith and Doubt
It takes a certain level of self-deception to be a lukewarm evangelical. Intense piety is in the tradition’s DNA....
BookMarks
One of the most important books to read in the year of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday may be Jean Baker’s biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, origina...
Church-based hate
Crisis recounts the sad stories of young people who, like Esau, cried for a blessing and too often did not receive it.
How the boom went bust
Paul Krugman is one economist who can analyze the complexities of an economic crisis, propose solutions and make the dis...
Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience
That religion is especially salient for new immigrants is a commonplace in the sociology and history of U...
Sacred Assemblies and Civic Engagement: How Religion Matters for America's Newest Immigrants
The landscape of American religion is changing rapidly....
Departments
The case for condoms: Bishops versus the pope
In March, when Pope Benedict XVI, on a flight to Cameroon, declared that the use of condoms is not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa—that, on the contrary, it “increases the problem”—I thought immediately of Francis Ntowe....
Scene of the crime: Television's longing for justice
Forensics television is more than gory titillation and casual senationalism. These programs scratch at religious itches: they try to see beyond death and long for ultimate justice.
Done in our name: Before we turn the page on torture
After President Obama released memos from Bush administration lawyers that defended waterboarding, Dick Cheney told Fox News that extreme interrogation methods like waterboarding helped the country gain important information and deter terrorist at...
Torturous times: The need for a Gamaliel
Human beings give way too easily to the temptation to make our arguments on each other's bodies. The apostles' lives were saved because one learned man was willing the make his argument another way.
News
People
Pat Robertson will retire in 2010 as president of Regent University, the Virginia school he founded, announced officials of the university, with 4,500 students on campus or online....
Obama team seeks support of progressives on poverty: White House staff address Sojourners gathering
Members of President Obama’s domestic team addressed more than 1,000 Christian progressives at an antipoverty meeting in Washington, asking for their help to accomplish the president’s agenda....
On Obama, Rome is more gentle than U.S. bishops: Vatican conspicuously silent
Ever since the University of Notre Dame announced that President Obama would receive an honorary degree and speak at its May 17 commencement ceremony, debate among American Catholics has grown increasingly heated....
Top SBC ethicist calls waterboarding torture: Land: Torture "violates everything we stand for"
Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land, a leading Christian conservative who helped advance the Bush administration’s agenda on a range of social issues, says that the formerly sanctioned practice of waterboarding of suspected terrorists is tortur...
Maine is fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage: A legislative move
Governor John Baldacci signed legislation May 6 that makes Maine the fifth U.S. state to allow same-sex marriages, and only the second to approve the unions without the threat of a court order....
Adventists deny trying to convert Sarah Obama: Response to complaints from Kenyan Muslims
Seventh-day Adventist leaders say there was no attempt to convert President Obama’s step-grandmother, a Muslim, during an evangelistic event this spring in Kenya....
In hard-hit Indiana churches pull together: Twenty percent unemployment
The annual Family Fest at Bethany Christian Schools in Goshen, Indiana, is usually a joyous event as families auction off handmade quilts, furniture and other goods in the annual school fund-raiser....
Methodist court says no to clergy performing same-sex weddings: Judicial Council rejects resolutions by West-coast conferences
The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal....
Seafarer chaplaincy confronts piracy fears: "An amazing ministry"
The recent dramatic high seas rescue of a merchant ship captain held hostage by Somali pirates stirred a public debate on whether cargo vessels should be armed....
Century Marks
Happy today: When life is grim, columnist Mary Schmich likes to ask people, "What's making you happy today?" She doesn't ask, "Are you happy?" That's a "black hole" of a question, she says, that can lead to equivocation and existential dread. Her question, instead, assumes that there's always something, no matter how grim life is, that can be a source of gladness, however small or simple—like a flower or a bird, a skyline or a full moon, or just a cup of coffee (Chicago Tribune, May 1).
Lectionary
God the troublemaker: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29
Going into the temple of the Lord would never be taken lightly. Still, Isaiah could not have imagined what was about to happen.