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Matt talks to Emily McGinley, site pastor at Urban Village Church Hyde Park-Woodlawn in Chicago, about planting a church for LGBTQ people of color and allies, her own circuitous spiritual journey, and integrating preaching with the congregation’s testimony.

I’m closing in on my 11th year of serving this particular congregation and more so every day I’m convinced there is fruit in ministry that only becomes possible with a longer measure of time. For instance, a few weeks ago I confirmed about 30 students in our congregation, many of whom I remember from their baptisms and from their day-school years here at the church. 

Pastors Frederick Haynes and George Mason both lead Baptist churches in Dallas, but they did not meet until the not-guilty verdict in the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin brought them together ...

India's constitution is firmly secular and democratic. Yet in recent years, Christians and Muslims have faced persecution.

In an effort to stave off a schism, the United Methodist Church deferred a decision on whether to allow same-sex marriage and accept LGBT clergy....

The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, Missouri, spend their days in silence—except when they are singing sacred music....

(The Christian Science Monitor) When Matthew Kukah first arrived as the new bishop of the Sokoto Diocese in northern Nigeria’s Muslim ...

My friend Laura Kelly Fanucci, a blogger and writer, recently lost her twin baby girls. She wrote a blog post about the experience, and then a follow-up as she continues to process her grief.

The binding constraint on progress against hunger and malnutrition is weak political commitment.

c. 2016 Religion News Service EDMOND, Oklahoma (RNS) In one of the reddest of the red states, appeals to traditional values have long resonated with many voters....

(The Christian Science Monitor) Iranian authorities will not allow the nation’s pilgrims to participate in the hajj to Mecc...

"The biggest driver of success against global poverty is economic growth—but not any kind of economic growth."

“Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.” I hear these words on a bright, cloudless morning on my way to work. They begin the speech that President Obama gave several hours earlier at Hiroshima.

My first congregation was a three-point parish in rural South Dakota. Three points meant that there were three churches. Two of them were in tiny towns, and one of them was out in the country. I lived in one of those tiny towns, in a large parsonage across from the church.

From our 21st-century perch, Wil­liam Shakespeare seems more reclusive than ever.

Three years ago, when Adam Plant began master of divinity studies at Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity, Plant was a North Carolina woman with a desire to plumb the intersection of faith a...

Gregory the Great, pope from 590-604 AD, wrote the Pastoral Rule to strengthen the office of the episcopacy following the fall of Rome. Widely read throughout Europe by bishops and laypeople, this treatise describes how bishops should lead, teach, live their lives, and govern others. The Pastoral Rule was intended to reshape and empower bishops following the spiritual, cultural, and economic deterioration of the Roman Empire.

I have written before about sharing worship with my son—the frustrations and the triumphs, the whys and the hows, the values and the hopes. It was especially meaningful to share space in the pew with my son week after week while we were living overseas.  All of that work and reflecting, hoping and teaching, has culminated in this new moment in our worshiping life as a family. 

If your mother is drowning in one location and two strangers in another, should you save your mother or the two strangers?

A nearly 12-year, round-the-clock protest by the parishioners of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini in Scituate, Massachusetts, came to an end late Monday (May 30)....