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Century Marks
Imagine this: Nursing professor Geraldine Gorman notes that for two centuries her profession has cared for the casualties of war....
Winning numbers: Religion in the 2004 election
In winning reelection George W. Bush expanded his 2000 coalition primarily by increasing the turnout and his support among key constituencies, including religious communities....
Join the church? Well . . . Attenders, not members: Attenders, not members
Decades ago, Dorothy E. Payton and her husband moved with their young children to a small prairie town in Montana....
Democrats in defeat ponder 'values gap' Centrist Democrats call on party to recast "moral issues": Centrist Democrats call on party to recast "moral issues"
When it comes to the Democratic Party’s on-again, off-again search for a message that would appeal to religious voters, any metaphor will do: asleep at the wheel, stumbling in a darkened room, a co...
Poll says war was top moral issue: One-third called greed and materialism top moral problem
The war in Iraq was the most important “moral issue” for voters in the national elections—far outpacing abortion and gay marriage as top-shelf concerns, according to a poll supported by progressive...
Mainline leaders congratulate Bush: "We pledge to work with President Bush to build bridges of understanding"
Leaders of mainline Protestant churches, who have been at odds with President Bush over the war in Iraq and other issues, urged national unity in congratulatory statements sent after he won reelect...
Iliff seminary warned on diversity issues: Problems prompted resignation of Latino president
The United Methodist Church has warned its Denver seminary that nearly $1 million in support will be cut off if the school does not resolve internal racial and cultural issues that prompted its Lat...
Episcopal priest quits after Druid embrace: William Melnyk repents and recants
One member of an Episcopal clergy couple who came under fire for embracing pagan worship has recanted and resigned his Pennsylvania pulpit, while his wife also apologized but expects to keep her jo...
Disciples pastor leaves Washington pulpit: Alvin O. Jackson of National City Christian Church
The former moderator of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has announced his plans to resign from a prominent Washington pulpit. Alvin O....
For the first time, U.S. Lutheran seminary taps woman president: Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary
A clergywoman and administrator who in the early 1990s helped shape the seminary education plans for the newly merged Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the first woman to head a U.S...
Foes of gay marriage eye federal amendment: Riding high on President Bush's reelection
Riding high on President Bush’s reelection and on decisive victories to ban gay marriage in 11 states, activists in the traditional-marriage movement say they now have a mandate to claim their ulti...
After Arafat, Muslims, Jews assess prospects: Hopes for a more peaceful future
American Jews and Muslims reflect differently on the life and leadership of Yasir Arafat, but they agree that, following his death, a new era of leadership is needed to unify Palestinians and reinv...
New kind of Christian: An Emergent voice
Brian McLaren’s two most important books—A New Kind of Christian and the recent A Generous Orthodoxy—both open by raising the specter of an evangelical pastor leaving the ministry or ...
Renewable energy: On the other side of mortal travail
Andy, age nine, is jumping rope without a rope. “Is that your invisible jump rope?” his brother John asks him....
No room for nuance: Looking ahead to 2008
When I ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress a few decades ago, I was an unknown Democrat trying to unseat a Republican....
Plutarch lives: Entertainment, education, liberation
In the last letter Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison, he asked, “Father, could you get me from the library Plutarch’s Lives of Great Men?” We do not know if the book ever reached the cap...
Cellmates
Few know blindness so profoundly as prisoners who once could see the whole world but now find the universe shrunk to the size of a cell. Inmates hear only what jailers allow, most often some version of “We own you.” As for music, the rhythm of one’s own pulse must suffice, and that hardly leads to dancing. One can even forget how to walk.
Holy fishes: Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Isaiah and the Baptizer conspire to give us animal dreams in this dark season of Advent. The earlier prophet’s vision warms our hearts. Who among us hasn’t yearned for a world in which lambs could hang out with wolves and adders behave as though Mr. Rogers had taught them how to play with children? A strange political critter appears in the dream as well, one that’s not the puppet of pollsters and the powerful, but a leader with the heart and Spirit of God.