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November 2, 2010

Volume 127, Issue #22
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Features

Feature

God is love: A basic Christian claim

What do Christians mean when they say that God is love? How do we answer that question in a dialogue between Muslims and Christians, which is to say, in a tension-filled intellectual space of wrestling to understand and articulate our similarities and differences with regard to what it means to love God and neighbor?

To answer this question briefly, it is best to go back to 1 John 4:7-12:

by Miroslav Volf
Cover Story

On the fault line: Christian-Muslim encounters in Nigeria

Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, and nearly half of its people are Christians. They are often in conflict, sometimes violent conflict, with Muslims.
by Eliza Griswold
Feature

A slow tsunami: Pakistan ravaged by flooding

The summertime floods have devastated Pakistan—in­undating one-fifth of the country, displacing millions, destroying and altering landscapes. But in other ways the floods changed very little. The country was already facing a perilous humanitarian and social situation. The floods have led some to wonder whether there is a future for the country.

"The Pakistani nation does not exist now," said one Pakistani.

by Chris Herlinger
Feature

Are the kids all right? Questions about donor conception: Questions about donor conception

In The Kids Are All Right, a sperm donor connects with his biological children but is eventually dismissed as an "interloper" in their lives. To believe that the kids are all right, we have to agree with this judgment.
by Beth Felker Jones
Feature

Married or not: Standards for gay clergy

How will the ELCA hold gay pastors who aren't married accountable to the standard of monogamy and lifelong commitment? Do same-sex couples have to prove what is taken for granted with married heterosexual couples?

by Jesse James DeConto

Feature

Land battle: Settlements and Middle East peace

Attacks on Israelis inside or emanating from the West Bank are now almost nonexistent. Peace efforts are focused instead on settlements—because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a conflict over land.
by Lara Friedman
Film

Never Let Me Go

Based on the award-winning 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, who also penned The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go is that rare story that doesn't rely on a revelatory plot twist to make its thematic point and drive the message home. As adapted by Alex Garland and directed by Mark Roma­nek, the movie stays faithful to the book's overall intent, even as it gives the three well-defined acts more the sense of taking a journey rather than of reaching a pre-ordained fate.

reviewed by John Petrakis

Books

A review of Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies

Some of the most difficult challenges confronting Christian commitments to an inclusive vision of human well-being involve the effective disclosure of well-established, taken-for-granted practices ...
reviewed by Thomas W. Ogletree

A review of The Shape of Participation

If you share my concern about the theological thinness of much of the
current craze of construing Christianity as a practice, get Roger
Owens's book. Even more, if you care about the theological identity of
the church, you will find The Shape of Participation to be this decade's finest work of ecclesiology.

reviewed by William H. Willimon

A review of The Seven Pillars of Creation

Creation has long been a neglected child in biblical-theological studies; it is ground often left to creationists and naysayers. Only in recent years has the Bible's creation theology been addressed in a major way, not least because of the impact of the environmental movement.

reviewed by Terence E. Fretheim

Free for what?

Franzen has turned his considerable novelistic talents to a kind of inquisito­rial examination of the American ideal of freedom. He shows how freedom is negatively construed—focused on what we are free from and not on what freedom might be for, what worthy ends it might be used to pursue.

reviewed by Rodney Clapp

Departments

On Art

The Last Supper

The New Mexican artist Vicente Telles stands in a line of Southwest religious workers going back to the 1700s....
reviewed by Lil Copan
Editor's Desk

Oasis in Cambridge

The United Reformed Church of Great Britain has about 75,000 members in 1,600 congregations. It has been declining in membership for years....
by John Buchanan

No exemptions for faith

Earlier this year, a group of Eng­lish bishops charged that the nation's Christians faced systematic discrimination that endangered their right to hold public office....
by Philip Jenkins
From the Editors

Impoverished thinking

The poverty rate in the U.S. reached 14.3 percent in 2009—the highest level in 15 years....
Faith Matters

Kingdom-sized desire

We're all perpetually longing for love. Fortunate are those who realize early that another human being can't meet this unrequitable need. Even more fortunate are men and women of prayer who realize that peace comes by embracing the longing itself.

by Suzanne Guthrie

News

Feature

A slow tsunami: Pakistan ravaged by flooding

The summertime floods have devastated Pakistan—in­undating one-fifth of the country, displacing millions, destroying and altering landscapes. But in other ways the floods changed very little....
by Chris Herlinger

Churches leaving ELCA evaluate the cost

South Dakota pastor Julius Badigo has long known that Christian discipleship is costly. For him, that cost is increasingly measured in dollars—to the tune of thousands per month....
by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

ELCA to cut 65 staffers due to lowered giving

To adjust for lower contributions to the national church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Amer­ica has announced a new plan that will cut about 65 jobs of staff members....

Critics say action needed at faith-based office

Six months after advisers turned in 164 pages of recommendations to the White House's faith-based office, thorny church-state questions remain unanswered, and some critics say the office has been used to push President Obama's health-care reform.<...
by Adelle M. Banks

Deaths

A memorial service was held October 16 for Howard L. Rice, the 1980 moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and for 30 years a teacher at San Francisco Theological Seminary....

Tea Party activists akin to religious Republicans

Americans who identify with the Tea Party are more religious than the general population but are less religious than conservative Christians, according to a new American Values poll....
by Kevin Eckstrom

Vatican official criticizes choice for Nobel Prize

The Vatican's top bioethics official expressed "perplexity" after the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded October 4 to the inventor of in vitro fertilization (IVF)....

Court rules Methodist agency in D.C. is not limited in advocacy

Officials working in the United Methodist Building, located on Capitol Hill, are not limited to advocacy on temperance-related issues, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge has ruled....

Supreme Court torn over speech rights, private rites

A family's right to privacy for the funeral of a slain marine clashed with a small church's right to preach its antigay gospel in a case...
by Daniel Burke

Lectionary

Sunday, November 14, 2010: Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19

It was the spring of 1963 in Birmingham, and it looked as if the civil rights movement would suffer yet another defeat. The powers that be had more jail space than the civil rights workers had people. But then one Sunday, reports historian Taylor Branch, 2,000 young people came out of worship at the New Pilgrim Baptist Church and prepared to march.
by Kyle Childress

Sunday, November 7, 2010: Luke 20:27-38

by Kyle Childress

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