Latest Articles
Authority figures: Advice to new clergy
For the past few years the religion department at the Chautauqua Institution near Buffalo has sponsored a program for new clergy and their families....
Bridging the racial divide: All schools should have the tools they need
Five decades ago, third-grader Linda Brown could not attend school in her racially integrated Topeka neighborhood; the law required her to take a bus across town to attend a dilapidated school desi...
Century Marks
Where would Jesus bike? Bicycling advocates in Chicago are seeking to close a network of boulevards on Sundays from May to October so they can be used by bikers, roller bladders and skaters. They’ve met resistance from some churches along the route. One of the pastors adamantly opposed to the plan is calling for a compromise—wait till Sunday afternoon to close the streets (Chicago Reader, June 22).
Faith-based politics: An exchange: On not mimicking the religious right
On the surface, the June 4 Presidential Forum on Faith, Values and Poverty seemed a good thing. But in the long run, the forum was not a victory for the faith community but rather a sign that social-justice Christians are making the same mistakes that the Christian right has been making—with the nation and Christianity paying the long-term price.
Faith-based politics: An exchange: Principled, not partisan, politics
This is a response to an article by Jan G. Linn....
Paradise for pedophiles: The flesh trade in India
When actor Richard Gere kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty last April, a judge in Jaipur signed an arrest warrant. The charge? Committing “an act of obscenity” in a public place....
UCC seeks faith-politics energy: Moyers and Obama speak
With fiery speeches on faith and politics, the United Church of Christ’s biennial General Synod seemed at times as much a revival or political rally as a mainline church meeting....
The Internet, gay sex and the surgeon general nominee: A new litmus test?
Surgeon general appointees are often controversial, usually for reasons having to do with sex. Conservatives fumed when C....
American Baptists, Cooperative Baptists celebrate their links: First national joint worship service
Worship infused with music and missions, cooperation and communion, and doses of laughter marked a historic reunion of Baptists in Washington, D.C....
Evangelical Covenant Church adds voice on care of environment: An urgency for change
Members of the Evangelical Covenant Church have added their voices to those of other evangelicals who have addressed the issue of environmental protection....
Faith conservatives cheered by high court rulings: High-profile First Amendment cases
Conservative religious organizations praised the Supreme Court term that ended last month, saying they are pleased with the way the court resolved several high-profile First Amendment disputes....
Racial, multicultural tensions still beset Unitarian Universalists: Moving toward truth and reconciliation
During the Unitarian Universalist Association’s recent national convention in Portland, Oregon, Joseph Santos-Lyons was ordained as the host city’s first homegrown minister of color in the church t...
Yale's Brevard Childs, biblical scholar, dies: Achieved Yale's highest academic rank
Brevard S. Childs, 83, an influential Old Testament scholar who was known for his work in biblical theology and taught at Yale Divinity School for 41 years, died June 23 in New Haven, Connecticut....
TV ministry: Not just for big-name preachers anymore: Raising cash to stay on the air
Television ministry once was the province of such prominent preachers as Robert Schuller, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. But the business—and it is a business—has come of age....
China repeats demands after Vatican overture: Beijing insists on break with Taiwan
Beijing reiterated demands this month that the Vatican must break its diplomatic links with Taiwan and practice “noninterference” in China’s internal affairs if the Roman Catholic Church wishes to ...
Two Canada churches reject same-sex rites: Anglicans and Lutherans turn down proposals
Canada’s Anglican and Lutheran churches have each turned down proposals to approve ceremonies of blessing for same-sex unions....
Briefly noted
For the second time in as many years, President Bush vetoed a bill June 20 that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research....
Happy pursuits: A Christian vision of the good life
Americans are obsessed with happiness....
Naming the dead: Our lives are bound up with all others
Jeremy M. Loveless. Nathanael J. Doring. Richard A. Bennett. James A. Funkhouser. J. Adan Garcia. According to a recent article in the New York Times, these are the names of the five soldiers killed in Iraq over the three-day Memorial Day weekend this year. If I had nothing else to say in this column, I would also name the 24 soldiers killed over Memorial Day weekends since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, along with the 4,000-some Americans who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since the wars in those countries began. I wish I could also name the Afghan and Iraqi dead, but I do not know anyone who keeps track of their names.
Atheism redux: What should we do?
Having written “The Uses of Infidelity” (1956), >The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion (1961) and Varieties of Unbelief (1964) back when I was on the trail of atheists and th...