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Nation of Islam is now a shadow of the group Muhammad Ali joined
Muhammad Ali, laid to rest in the tradition of his Muslim faith in June, introduced many Americans to Islam....
Hieronymus Bosch’s art featured in two exhibits 500 years after his death
Hieronymus Bosch, who gave us many of our modern visions of hell, has inspired episodes of The Simpsons, rock ’n’ roll lyrics, a children’s book character, movies The Exorcist and...
Pastor in the middle: Dont avoid conflict, avoid triangles
It's up to pastors to remind each other to talk to people instead of about them.
Episode 32: Liz Goodman
Matt talks with Liz Goodman, minister of the United Church of Christ in Monterey, Massachusetts, about the value of ferocity in relationships, being perceived by small-town folks as provocative, and the freedom that comes from being in a pulpit for 15 years.
Safe, not safe, never safe
My wife and I are in Maine for a memorial service celebrating the life of the grandfather of my children, my beloved father-in-law from the first go-around. The collection of his children and grandchildren, and his wife’s clan of three generations, includes a handful of other LGBTQ people. It’s been a wonderful experience, living into the way we’ve all worked so hard to make our two household-family work for 20 years now.
Executive power on trial
There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. The administration has to somehow prioritize who is slated for deportation.
Do you see this woman?
Growing up it was in the kitchen every Sunday where I would witness the most frenetic, clamorous work of our church community.
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter
Max Porter’s debut novel, which hovers between poetry and prose, illustrates the ways in which grief can be simultaneously violent and gentle.
South Carolina AME churches keep extending welcome a year after massacre
A few weeks after a young white gunman killed nine people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, another young white man walked into a Bible study at another...
Jackson Nasoore Ole Sapit elected Kenya Anglican archbishop, succeeds former GAFCON chair Eliud Wabukala
Jackson Nasoore Ole Sapit, a traditionalist Anglican bishop who nonetheless steered clear of sexuality issues, has been elected the new archbishop of Kenya and is being installed on July 3....
Faith in translation: The gospel as a second language
A fast-growing number of people do not have a religious first language. And many churches don't seem eager to connect with them.
On falling short and stumbling home
A few years ago, I was asked how long I had been a pastor. I forget how long it was precisely, but it must have been somewhere in the window of two to three years. I told my questioner this and the response was darkly humorous: “Oh, so long enough to disappoint some people.” Indeed.
I was having a conversation with a friend recently about the broad strokes of our city’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis.
Discourses of sin and debt
The satisfaction theory of the atonement centers on debt, humanity’s debt to God. It’s often criticized for its gruesome picture of God. But it also paints a weird picture of Jesus: Christ the Debt Buyer.
Missionaries among Muslims
To lionize the missionary’s courage, Muslims were cast as implacable adversaries and served as the quintessential foil.
Cathedral to remove glass Confederate flags
The Washington National Cathedral will replace depictions of the Confederate flag in its stained-glass windows with plain glass but maintain adjoining panes honoring Confederate generals for at l...
Mass media that unites
Conservative religious people decry what they see as a liberal media unsympathetic to their worldview. Liberal Protestants and Catholics wonder why the media deploys the umbrella term “Christians” but seems to mean mostly people who sound nothing like them. People of other faiths may wonder why they rarely appear in the news except to represent extremism of some form. It seems as if the media aids rather than ameliorates the growing polarization of the American populace.
Eighty-nine years ago an interfaith group of activists and religious and political leaders aimed to use the nascent radio and movie industries to bring people of different faiths, races, and ethnicities together.
A blue balloon
We sat on the T, hot and tired after a morning wandering the streets of Cambridge and the ivy-Hogwarts glory of Hahvahd's campus. It was the final day of an all-too-short vacation. It being public transportation, the public was present, a sampling of the Boston streetscape.
How does it end?
The apocalypse, it seems, is cultural and psychological rather than historical. One can only hope that this theory is right.
California assisted-dying law takes effect, health-care providers respond
Somewhere in California on June 9, a terminally ill person may have lifted a glass and consumed a lethal slurry of pulverized prescription pills dissolved in water....
June 26, 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Luke 9:51-62
Jesus setting his face to Jerusalem marks a shift: the text mentions it three times. There is a boldness and immovable attention to the assignment.