Latest Articles
New book offers help on how to transition church properties
Congregations facing closure or downsizing must think about more than maximizing profits from the sale of facilities and other assets, social entrepreneur and church finance expert Mark Elsdon said...
The slow work of dialogue
For 20 years, Mennonite scholars from North America and Shi’a scholars from Iran have met periodically to build bridges.
Who wrote the Bible?: Enslaved people and the New Testament with Candida Moss (S3:E5)
“Once we accept biblical collaboration as fact and recognize its participants as oppressed human beings who nevertheless had agency, we are forced to confront a truth that can be unsettling to some readers of scripture: that the meaning of the Bible is fluid.”
Reading scripture through the experience of disability
Julia Watts Belser sees in the Torah a God who is in love with the creative possibilities of difference.
Regionalization a key question for African United Methodists
As the United Methodist Church counts down to this year’s general conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, regionalization proposals are topmost on the minds of African leaders and delegates....
March 17, Lent 5B (John 12:20–33)
“If you really want to live you’ve gotta die” is a puzzle that could leave you off kilter your whole life long.
William Guthrie’s weird Christianity
The rector of St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery brought the church into relationship with the Greenwich Village avant-garde of the 1920s.
For infertile people, the fate of frozen embryos is deeply personal
When Ericka Andersen and her husband started infertility treatment a decade ago, they were hoping for one successful pregnancy....
Good news that doesn’t fit on a sign (John 3:14-21)
What has always interested me about the John 3:16 signs is the singular focus.
To forgive is exclusively divine
Ancient Israel’s war with Amalek is a lesson in repentance and covenant.
Religious leaders decry plan to bring back electric chair, gassing in Louisiana
A cross section of religious leaders gathered on the steps of the Louisiana Capitol recently to offer prayers and protest over the state’s plan to add the electric chair and poison gas to its lineu...
At odds with the state, Amish milk farmer has long day in court
An Amish raw milk farmer in southern Pennsylvania may have a glimmer of hope to escape...
Days of wanting
My family didn’t want to go to America at all; we left Vietnam on pain of death.
A refugee’s lonely heart
Beth Nguyen’s second memoir is a deep dive into the void of a mother’s absence and the silence surrounding it.
Intelligence moved by love: Thecla as philosopher with Dawn LaValle Norman (S3:E4)
“Thecla shows us how women could be important models, not only insofar as they overcame their femininity, but in their femininity, as models for men and women.”
Biden administration finalizes rule on religious liberty protections
Nine agencies of the Biden administration have finalized a new rule that officials say will improve religious freedom by protecting the rights of beneficiaries of social services funded by the gove...
March 10, Lent 4B (Numbers 21:4–9; John 3:14–21)
When John 3 came up I used to preach on the dangers of fixating on one verse. Now I cringe at that memory.
De-commodifying time
Jenny Odell argues that we need to get back in touch with our preindustrial sense of time.