Latest Articles
Getting saved
Though it has all the marks of an independent film—a film-school screenplay and production difficulties—Saved! is blessed with an intelligent script and a first-rate ensemble of actors whose...
Web of emotion
The best tales of the supernatural, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, use fantasy to dramatize emotions that are too dark and overpow...
Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment
Like novelist Richard Brandford, James Gustave Speth, one of America’s premier environmentalists, uses the fa...
Heavy hearts: Truth-telling prophet, caring pastor
Pastors often experience an uncomfortable tension between trying to be both a truth-telling prophet and a caring pastor....
Getting religion: Where Democrats have failed
The Democrats have a religion problem, and it is not just that presidential candidate John Kerry has run afoul of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church because of his support of abortion right...
Century Marks
Bad table manners: When Samuel Wells was the vicar of a small Anglican church in a marginal neighborhood, a gang of surly adolescents burst into the church one Sunday as the Eucharist was be...
Crusader: Bush's religious passions
Are George W. Bush’s religious convictions his own business and no one else’s? Or do they have very public consequences?...
SBC warned on veering further right: A risk of Pharisaism
Southern Baptists broke ties with their global brethren in the Baptist World Alliance, marshaled support for a familiar list of social issues, and voted to keep the Southern Baptist Convention name...
Southern Baptist voices . . . On the 25th anniversary of the conservative resurgence: On the 25th anniversary of the conservative resurgence
On the 25-year anniversary of the fundamentalist-led campaign for the "conservative resur...
Evangelical document tries to present more nuanced social position: A landmark statement
In a self-defining paper for the broad spectrum of U.S....
Former theology dean Walter Muelder dies: Dedicated to global ecumenism and racial equality
Walter G. Muelder, dean of the Boston University School of Theology from 1945 to 1972, died of a heart attack on June 12 at age 97....
Reformed Church calls Christian Zionism 'distortion' of scripture: An obstacle to Middle East peace
A popular reading of scripture embraced by evangelical giants Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and played out in the top-selling Left Behind books, was declared a “distortion of the biblical messag...
Vermont Episcopalians unveil ceremonies for same-sex unions: "Consistency in teaching, in language"
Episcopalians in Vermont, in a “pastoral response” to the nation’s first and only civil unions law, have unveiled liturgical rites that gay couples can use in the state’s 48 Episcopal churches....
Grieving parents cite dangers with popular church vans: Van Angels retrofitting 15-passenger vehicles
Mark Smith often contemplates what his daughter, Malori, would be doing now if she hadn’t been killed on a church mission trip to Mexico two years ago, six weeks after her high school graduation....
Sudan faith forum urges final peace: "The momentum must be continued"
Delegates of the Sudan Ecumenical Forum (SEF) from Africa, Europe and North America have hailed recent peace protocols signed between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the government of Su...
Briefly noted
U.S.-based Muslim organizations have decried the beheadings in June of two foreign workers by extremists in the Middle East....
Scriptural schemes: The ABCBAs of biblical writing
“But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mark 10:31)....
Passed on: Vocation and the family business
The photo of the new priest among his people is an old one. “First Solemn High Mass,” it reads in white handprint in the top right corner, “of Rev. Thomas P. Lynch,” and on the next line, “St....