Latest Articles
Background check: Churches respond to safety concerns
I’m still amazed,” declared Mary Alice Gran, the soft-spoken national director of children’s ministries for the United Methodist Church, based in Nashville....
Go and tell
About 86 years ago the mainline churches did something. Maybe we washed our lucky game underwear. Maybe we traded Babe Ruth....
Evangelism After Christendom
Bryan Stone’s Evangelism after Christendom is a remarkable book that was about 30 years in the...
The Tinkerer's Accomplice
Can natural selection of living things, aided by more or less random mutations (genetic tinkering), explain what ap...
Home Ground
So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see w...
Jesus of Hollywood
The biopic is a film genre that presents itself as history and is received as such by its audience....
A guy, a girl, a guitar
Glen Hansard, lead singer for the Irish band The Frames, has a long, woebegone face pebbled with a rust-colored beard; his eyes are immense, with the peeled look of billiard balls....
Blogging toward Sunday
It seems strange to be reading a tough text like Luke 9:51-62 during the gentle days of early summer. Most of our congregations are in relaxed, vacation mode....
Blogging toward Sunday
The disciples are dense and forgetful. They bumble along after Jesus, barely able to keep up....
Scary story
This passage has all the elements of a scary story. Jesus and the disciples get into a boat and a horrible storm comes up....
Listening globally: New ways of being the church
It is instructive and ultimately very encouraging for an American churchperson to get a glimpse of the global Christian enterprise....
Nature's God: The crucial point for Christians
The notion of intelligent design in nature is not controversial among Christians....
Century Marks
Silent retreat: Brian Doyle, sometime contributor to the Christian Century, reports that his sister, who lives in a monastery, once went on a summer-long silent retreat. He asked her what her first words were when she broke her silence. She grinned and said “Pass the butter,” and when he complied, she laughed: those actually were her first words after the retreat. He also asked her if it had been hard to remain silent. At first it was, she said, but then it had become a prayer (U.S. Catholic, June).
Charms of an ideologue: Jerry Falwell at Duke
"Did you ever meet Jerry Falwell?” someone asked me the day Falwell died. “Meet him? Jerry nearly got me fired,” I responded....
Falwell leaves complex legacy: A pension for rhetoric coupled with personal warmth
Few figures in the second half of the 20th century have proved as polarizing in American popular and political culture as Jerry Falwell, who died May 15 at the age of 73....
Carter's criticism of Bush draws reactions: Huckabee withdraws from New Baptist Covenant engagement
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has canceled plans to speak at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration next January because of organizer Jimmy Carter’s recent criticism of President Bu...
House-hunting clergy balance personal, ethical concerns: Housing arrangements run the gamut
The basketball hoop bends forward in front of the two-story house in Ashtabula, Ohio, where newly named Lutheran bishop Elizabeth Eaton raised two children, sent them to public schools and lived wh...
NCC's Edgar will head Common Cause: National group addresses election reform, other issues
Bob Edgar, the former member of Congress who led the National Council of Churches for seven years, has been selected as president and CEO of Common Cause, a national advocacy group addressing campa...
Pope acknowledges colonial-era abuses: After criticism for minimizing injustices
Facing strong criticism after saying in Brazil that Christianity was not forced upon the indigenous people of the Americas, Pope Benedict XVI has admitted to “shadows that accompanied the work of e...