Latest Articles
ID ruling expected to impact other states: The reach of the Dover, Pennsylvania, decision
Only days after the high-profile intelligent-design trial ended in the fall, Federal Judge John E....
Pope selects new diplomat to U.S. Archbishop Pietro Sambi to succeed Montalvo: Archbishop Pietro Sambi to succeed Montalvo
The Vatican’s chief ambassador to Israel has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as the church’s top ambassador to Washington and the U.S. church....
New grants program seeks young clergy, local church support: Congregations can apply for Fund for Theological Education grants.
With many mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church expecting fewer young pastors in coming years, the Fund for Theological Education (FTE) says that it will receive $6 million from...
Rock star's activism moves many Muslims: Salman Ahmad as Islam's Bono
One of Salman Ahmad’s earliest gigs was a talent show at King Edward Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was studying to be a doctor....
Bono: 'More than a rock star' The unshaven diplomat
Elvis Presley shook hands with Richard Nixon in 1970, but it wasn’t much more than a fleeting photo op....
Briefly noted
After days of protests during their Hong Kong talks in December, the 149 members of the World Trade Organization hammered out a scaled-down agreement on global commerce....
Peace army: Christian Peacemaker Teams face hostility
In a scene that has been repeatedly played since Operation Enduring Freedom commenced in Afghanistan four years ago, Michelle Naar-Obed left her home in December for a tour of duty....
The siege of Narnia: What reviewers are saying
My class on the Inklings (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their circle) met on Tuesdays and Thursdays last semester, just in time for elevenses....
Pucker up: The Christian kiss
A book by Michael Philip Penn titled Kissing Christians is attracting attention....
Boast not: 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Several decades ago, when I was filling out my application for seminary admission, I came to a question that asked me to provide biblical justification for my calling. I knew I wanted to attend seminary, but found it difficult to state why. Then I remembered my Wesley Foundation pastor preaching on 1 Corinthians 9:16b, and I wrote, “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel.” The text expressed the urgency I felt and even a tinge of divine necessity—although I think I knew even then that I was going a bit too far.
Spellbound: Psalm 111; Mark 1:21-28
In the days before every district superintendent carried a cell phone, driving the charge conference circuit was a great opportunity to listen to the radio. My favorite station was NPR. More than once I found myself totally enthralled by a broadcast story. Sometimes I would pull into my own driveway but be unable to get out of the car because I was a prisoner of a story. I sat on the edge of my seat, my hand ready to turn the car key, unable to move. Maybe it was the story about the little boy caught in a moral dilemma: he needed to tell his mother the truth about a neighborhood crime, but could not betray a confidence. What would he do?
Team players: What do associate pastors want?
When I asked my friend about his work as an associate pastor, he ripped into his senior minister: “He won’t communicate! He doesn’t even seem interested in what I do at his church!” When I spoke with a senior pastor, he sighed. “Sometimes with my staff I feel like my dad did during a long car trip. When we kids would get rambunctious, he’d take just so much before turning around to give us a good whack.”
Further along
Few writers can stand on the edge of personal destruction and then report on the process with both mordant wit and complete honesty. For Anne Lamott, the combination made Traveling Mercies a runaway best seller. Six years later, Lamott continues her account of her new faith and its application to her life as a writer, church member and parent in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. In the five years since Traveling, Lamott seems to have gained strength, propelling herself forward through rough moments by leaning on her congregation, her friendships and therapy, and shaping a Christian life for herself and her son, Sam, now a teenager.
Interpreting Disability/Inside Deaf Culture
Interpreting Disability is a refreshingly honest look at real life as faced by ...
Eudora Welty
"To make a prairie,” Emily Dickinson once wrote, “it takes a clover and one bee, / . . ....
The Way of Jesus
As a clergyman in a mainline denomination, I find myself either bored or annoyed when I even glance over a book ...
Imperial Nature
In Imperial Nature, Michael Goldman, who teaches sociology at the University o...
Heartbreak mountain
After the world premiere of Brokeback Mountain at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Picture, the publicity machines began referring to it as “the gay cowboy mo...
Reasoning about war: Violence as a last resort
Yes, the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power. And yes, the rise of a stable, democratic Iraq would be a force for reform in the Middle East. But such benefits do not constitute a moral case for war. In the just war tradition, war is justifiable only as an emergency response undertaken in self-defense and as a last resort. Respect for the sovereignty of other states is a basic component of the international order. In other words, war is not an ordinary instrument for improving the world.