Magazine /

April 7, 2009

Volume 126, Issue #7

Features

Art you can believe in: Artists outside the church and within it

In December, the arts-and-faith journal Image published its 20th-anniversary edition, showcasing the work of poets, short-story writers, theologians and essayists as well as visual artists. Under the direction of Gregory Wolfe, Image has become one of the top-ten best-selling literary journals in the U.S. The quarterly is published by the Center for Religious Humanism, based at Seattle Pacific University.

by Amy Frykholm

Feature

Poll watching: Tova Wang on election reform

Politicians and activists were making sweeping accusations about voter fraud during the 2008 election season, warning that thousands of illegitimate registrations had been submitted and that election theft was immiment. Is the registration system vulnerable to fraud? How can it be improved? Tova Wang, a nationally recognized expert on election reform and vice president for research at Common Cause, a citizens’ lobbying group, answers questions about the voter registration controversies of 2008 and discusses proposals for improving the voting process.

by Meg Murphy-Sweeney

Feature

Congregational snapshot: Four church trends

Probably every churchgoer can say how his or her church is changing or has changed. It is much more difficult to know whether the experience of any particular congregation fits into a larger pattern. We need a bird’s-eye view to answer such questions.

by Mark Chaves

Cover Story

Stand and deliver: Performers in the pulpit

At the annual banquet of the University of Chicago Divinity School, first-year student Rebecca Anderson knocks ’em dead with a stand-up comedy routine. But then she should: she was previously a stand-up comic. “When I tell people here I grew up in a fundamentalist family, they treat me like I just got out of a POW camp. 'Oh my God,' they say, 'Are you OK?'"

by Jason Byassee

Film

Coraline

The entrancing animated feature Coraline, faithfully adapted by Henry Selick from Neil Gaiman’s marvelous children’s novel, is an Alice in Wonderland story. The feisty, sharp-witted Coraline (voiced by today’s busiest child actor, Dakota Fanning) finds an alternate world behind a locked door in her apartment building.

reviewed by Steve A. Vineberg

Books

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire is a deceptively short yet theologically deep book....

reviewed by David W. Miller

BookMarks

Despite the flippant title, this is a serious theological meditation on the Lord’s Prayer which serves also as a commenta...

Lessons before dying

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By Martin B. Copenhaver

Text messages

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By Barbara Melosh

Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America

If you’re looking for a book that will either vilify or canonize Bill Bright and Campu...

reviewed by Brett H. Smith

No Ordinary Angel: Celestial Spirits and Christian Claims About Jesus

Theologians and biblical scholars don’t usually trespass into popular religion....

reviewed by Samuel Wells

Departments

Editor's Desk

Wilderness of uncertainty: Forgotten virtues to relearn

Theologian N. T. Wright says that even when you are in the Promised Land you are never far from the wilderness....

by John Buchanan

Faith Matters

A saint for hard times: Saint Hedwig

I’ve been wondering who would be a good patron saint for the deepening recession in which we find ourselves. The obvious candidates are those paragons of frugality who learned to live without a steady income or the comfort of regular meals. St....

by Stephanie Paulsell

American Soundings

There's a word for it: A collection of neologisms

New inventions often result in new words, or neologisms. Radar, for instance, emerged as an acronym for a “radio detection and ranging” device....

by Rodney Clapp

News

Lutheran bishops seek to promote AIDS awareness: Leaders undergo HIV testing

Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have joined African religious leaders in publicly undergoing testing to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS and to end a legacy of church stigma and silence on the subject. “We in the U.S....

Obama ends federal funding ban on stem cell research: Reverses Bush administration policy

With an executive order, President Obama made official what many scientists had long anticipated and many religious conservatives had long feared—he lifted his predecessor’s near-total ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research....

Sixty Oregonians died in assisted suicides in 2008: Under Death with Dignity Act

Sixty Oregonians ended their lives last year by taking a lethal drug dose prescribed under the Death with Dignity Act, state officials have reported. That’s the highest annual total in the 11-year history of the law—11 more than in 2007....

Baptist World Alliance slashes its 2009 budget: Worst financial situation in years

Members of the Baptist World Alliance’s executive committee, after hearing a sobering financial report detailing investment losses over the last year, agreed to slash the group’s 2009 budget by $900,000, or nearly 30 percent. ...

Survey: U.S. grows less religious, less Christian: Self-identified Christians down 10 percent

The nation has grown less religious in the last two decades, a new study shows, with a 10 percent drop in the number of people who call themselves Christians and increases in all 50 states among those who are not aligned with any faith....

Shootings give rise to church security concerns: Balancing hospitality with safety

The day after a church shooting on a March Sunday that left an Illinois pastor dead, church security consultant Marc Brooks fielded calls from eight congregations eager to get firearms into the hands of worship staff or volunteers....

Giving up online social networks for Lent? A virtual fast: A virtual fast

Most days you can find college sophomore Adan Farrah on his laptop checking in with his classmates, looking at photos and updating his personal page on Facebook....

Mainline called uncounted force for change: Clergy support administration on social spending

The White House has an oft-overlooked religious ally for solving the country’s social problems through greatly expanded government programs, if a new survey of senior pastors in mainline Protestant churches is a good indication....

by John Dart

Earmark excess: An opportunity for reform

Complaining about earmarks is a staple of U.S. politics. The specific projects that members of Congress tack on to spending bills have long sparked public outrage....

Century Marks

Thanks to Darwin: Mark A. Throntveit and Alan G. Padgett of Luther Seminary argue that Darwin’s work frees us to read the Bible on its own terms and helps us to realize that science and the Bible have different, and not necessarily conflicting, agendas. “Science seeks answers to questions of what and how, while biblical interpretation seeks answers to questions of who and why.” The Genesis accounts of creation are less about the origins of creation and more about the ordering of chaos and forming of relationship with us humans (Word & World, Winter).

People

The supervisor of New York congregations for the United Church of Christ has been nominated to become the denomination’s next general minister and president....

Vatican opposes faith-based Web addresses: Could lead to "bitter disputes"

Establishing Internet domain names based on religion would lead to “bitter disputes” among churches, the Vatican has warned the nonprofit entity responsible for the Internet’s naming system....

Lectionary

Ever coming toward us: John 20:1-18

by Frank G. Honeycutt

How Jesus shares the peace: John 20:19-31

The disciples are afraid, so they lock their doors. I do the same.