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Resisting efforts to eliminate organizational havens for congregations that welcome gays, American Baptist leaders and delegates meeting in Denver maintained an open stance on homosexuality—even if...

The Supreme Court pleased no one entirely with its mixed decisions in the Ten Commandments cases....

The article in the previous issue on megachurch pastor Joel Osteen set me to thinking about the members of my congregation who are wa...

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the popular book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, was born in Canada to an English father and a Jamaican mother. He did not look black until he let his hair grow out Afro-style. With the Afro he started getting “stopped and frisked on the streets of America for no other reason than looking like a black American.” This experience of racial profiling was the inspiration for his most recent book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, which delves into the psychology of the “unconscious mental processes we all use to size up a person or a situation with just a few telling details” (Black Issues Book Review, July-August).

Members of the United Church of Christ, like their freedom-loving forebears in New England, cherish their local sovereignty and penchant for independent thinking....

Contrary to some expectations, the United Church of Christ convention over the Fourth of July weekend in Atlanta reaffirmed traditional Christian claims and rejected financial divestment tactics ag...

The surprise was palpable in the nation’s capital when Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a crucial swing vote in many of the Supreme Court’s most controversial decisions of the past 24 years, announced ...

Presbyterians have officially approved 11 new policies on clergy sexual abuse, marking a shift, church leaders say, from focusing on the accused to protecting innocent victims....

United Methodist Church officials have restored the good standing of Iliff School of Theology in Denver after the seminary addressed recommended reforms on ethnic diversity under the threat of losi...

The National Council of Churches sent a Fourth of July declaration to President Bush to voice grievances over what the organization calls a failed policy in Iraq and a “dishonorable” war....

Putting behind them a controversial document, Pope Benedict XVI met with leaders of the World Council of Churches June 16 and reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s “irreversible” commitment to the searc...

The choice of Uganda-born John Sentamu as archbishop of York, the second most senior post in the (Anglican) Church of England, has been hailed in both countries, with a leading Ugandan newspaper de...

In an unusual turn of events, a Palestinian Authority committee of inquiry has cleared Irineos, the deposed Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, of accusations that he was involved in leasing chu...

After two years of acrimonious debate, Canada’s House of Commons on June 28 passed a controversial same-sex marriage bill....

A new pastor learns about the church's annual tarrin’ party.

Scholars and church growth experts have been paying attention to Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, the subject of Gerardo Marti’s book A Mosaic of Believers: Diversity and Innovation in a...

I write this near the end of a doctor of ministry class at Columbia Seminary, where 16 pastors are exploring virtues for preaching....

Theodore A. Gill, onetime managing editor of this magazine, died last month. Mine is the only name remaining on the masthead from his time at the magazine 47 years ago....

When I speak in churches across the country, I often hear “former pastor” stories, or stories about struggles that involve a former pastor. What is this “former pastor problem”?...

Paul claims that no one is “out”—neither the people of Israel for not accepting the Christian story nor the non-Jewish people for not being part of Israel’s story.