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Every now and then I read a book for the simple reason that everyone else is reading it....

It has become common in political circles of late to refuse even to talk with one’s enemies. President Bush refuses to talk with Syria’s president Bashir Assad....

Make videos, not war: Ava Lowery, 16, is a Methodist peace activist in Alexander City, Alabama. Rolling Stone magazine called her one of the great mavericks of 2006. Lowery makes homemade videos that juxtapose images from the Iraq war with popular music and provocative quotes (her Web site is www.peacetakescourage.com). One of her best-known videos is “WWJD?” which pairs the song “Jesus Loves Me” with images of grieving and wounded Iraqi children. (Chicago Tribune, April 4).

Last year a four-year-old boy named Sean Paddock died in North Carolina after he was struck with a plumbing supply line, then tightly wrapped in blankets....

In 1992 I had a clinical depression. It was a long time in coming, but in hindsight it was inevitable. I was hunkered down in my study trying to write a sermon on the atonement. Behind the stormy sky in my mind, I saw not a smiling Providence offering a gesture of boundless love in sharing his son Jesus, but a scowling ogre, an angry, petulant father. Whether this torment was a function of the descending depression or a contribution to it, I cannot say, but I called my wife and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m coming unglued.”

A fledgling coalition of religious groups is trying to show Americans that for too many people worldwide, clean drinking water isn’t as close as the kitchen tap....

It happens every time a U.S. soldier or marine dies in Iraq. Internet connections are shut down....

White mainline Protestants who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning voters favored Senator Barack Obama (D., Ill.) slightly over Senator Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.), 27 percent to 24 percent, as the ...

The openly gay Virginia man who was at the center of a high-profile court case after he was denied membership in a United Methodist church has been accepted into membership under the church’s new p...

The Dallas Morning News recently received the Religion Communicators Council award for the nation’s best religion section....

When Israel’s foreign ministry canceled a meeting with Vatican officials scheduled for early spring in Rome, the official reason given was the pressure of “international political events.”...

Speaking from St....

In a labor settlement brokered by Atlanta’s Carter Center and backed by Presbyterians, fast-food giant McDonald’s and a coalition of Florida farm workers announced an agreement April 9 to do...

A recently retired conservative Episcopal bishop from Albany, New York, has left the church to become a Catholic....

"Man is wolf to man," said Roman playwright Plautus, and novelist C. J. Sansom seems to agree. The main character in his historical novels, detective Matthew Shardlake, repeats the ancient adage three times in Dark Fire, the second novel in the Shardlake series.Through the first-person narratives of a 16th-century lawyer, Sansom gives fictional life to a gloomy but not hopeless view of human nature.In Dissolution, the first book, King Henry VIII closes a Benedictine monastery on England's Cornish coast as part of a massive seizure of church lands and properties. In Dark Fire, Henry fears that Catholic forces may revolt with a magical concoction, a jellied petroleum akin to napalm. In the newest book, Sovereign, the king makes a grand tour of his kingdom as a display of royal might and a warning to Catholic forces in the north.

Once again it was a Lent of loopholes, of minor sacrifices deferred by family travels and travails and of minor irritations unredeemed, so that as Palm Sunday drew near it caught me in need of a ne...

PrincÍpio do Evangelho® de Jesus Cristo, Filho de Deus, is the Portuguese translation of Mark 1:1, “Here begins the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” João Ferreira translated it in 188...

Last November I traveled to a restful location outside of Kampala, Uganda, to spend three days with African Christian leaders who are trying to address the destructive conflicts in their countries....

In John 5, festival scenes in the holy city are juxtaposed with the view of five porticoes full of invalids. Imagine dropping by the nursing home on your way to Christmas Eve services. One place is festive, filled with pretty clothes, color, light and music. The other location features crutches, canes and people who cannot hide their desperate need for healing.

Of the four evangelists, Luke alone writes an actual exit scene for the risen Jesus.