Latest Articles
Home grown: A simple evangelistic message
Evangelist Billy Graham seems to have closed out his 60-year career as the country’s most famous evangelist....
Job description: Birmingham-Southern students burned churches as a "joke"
Birmingham-Southern College has long prided itself on the actions of students who have gone all over the world—and as far away as Mother Teresa’s mission in Calcutta—to perform good deeds as part o...
Election recount: Theories of Everything author honored
Briton John Barrow, a University of Cambridge cosmologist and mathematician whose work explores the relationship between life and the universe, as well as the nature and limits of human understandi...
1776/The Grand Idea: Door open for more extensive investigation
The leadership of the Orthodox Church in America has ignored calls for a special audit to determine if millions of church dollars were misspent in the 1990s, but has agreed to look over the books f...
Fear: The History of a Political Idea: Looser federation unlikely solution
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has warned in a television interview that the worldwide Anglican Communion may “rupture” over the issue of homosexuality....
A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors: Nicholson lost daughter in London bombings
A debate on absolution was stirred in England recently after an Anglican priest stepped down from her parish duties because she could not forgive those who carried out the July bombings on London’s...
Two denominations see more cuts ahead: PCUSA and UCC announce shortfalls
Noting a trend with no immediate end, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ have announced shortfalls in contributions, which are likely to mean cuts in national staffs.<...
American beginnings: Private entities should rewrite their rules if necessary
President Bush has urged large corporations and foundations to join government agencies in offering grants to faith-based organizations, adding that the private entities should rewrite their rules ...
Bubble-wrapped: Voice of the Faithful calls for replacements
The top two officers at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops faced new pressure to relinquish their national posts in light of allegations related to sexual misconduct....
A pastoral voice: An interview with Marilynne Robinson
In 1980, Marilynne Robinson published her first novel, Housekeeping, which won a PEN/Hemingway Award and was made into a movie....
The waters of solidarity: On the brink of civil war
In the 1950s, the CIA invented the term blowback as a marker for the ricochet effect of its covert actions. Since then the term has come to signify the backlash and other unintended consequences of intervening in foreign countries. For three years the U.S. has coped with a blowback nightmare in Iraq; now it is teetering on the edge of something even worse. Meanwhile the architects of the war still want to attack Iran and Syria, but find themselves enmeshed in the grim consequences of invading Iraq.
In Advent: Preaching Proverbs
As a lectionary preacher who works mainly on Sundays, I have spent much of my preaching life grazing the well-fertilized pastures that my tradition has laid out for me....
Party on: Anniversary planning
For years my multiyear calendar has had a listing for April 19, 2009: “Mt....
Sunrise: Easter laughter
In the days before Easter, preachers find themselves ricocheting back and forth between anticipation of full-to-overflowing sanctuaries and anxiety about being up to the task....
Middle East peace: Mark 16:1-8
If Mark’s ending creates discomfort and uncertainty, it is partly due to our knowledge of how the Easter story is told in the other Gospels.
A thousand little maps: Kindness on the border
As you head south out of San Antonio, you begin to enter the brush country. It’s something of a cross between a desert and a briar patch. Cacti abound, and almost every plant has thorns or spines of some kind. Everything is armored and protected. Even the cacti are on the offensive. It is this brutal and scorched countryside that thousands of Mexicans brave each year as they cross the border looking for a share of the legendary wealth of los Estados Unidos.
Palm Sunday (Mark 11:1-11)
The two disciples must have imagined a grander and nobler role for themselves than donkey detail. For this they left their fishing nets?
The matrix
You shall be called the repairer of the breach” said Isaiah, “the restorer of the streets to live in” (58:12)....