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Local ways are rarely senseless or stupid. It's just that a new pastor likely doesn't yet understand them as the locals do.

The news that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards will speak at Georgetown University this week reignited a perennial debate about freedom and identity in religious universities, particularly Catholic institutions.

One line I read a few weeks ago about congregational life together has stuck with me in a big way. I’ve brought it up, in one way or another, several times already. In a Christian Century article, “More People, Looser Ties” David Eagle drops the sentence, “Think of it this way: a congregation with 100 married couples today has 1,000 fewer hours of potential volunteer labor to tap than it did in 1970.”

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(The Christian Science Monitor) At first glance, Poland’s heated debate over a proposed total ban on abortion may seem familiar....

The Garrison Church in Potsdam, Germany, would seem an unlikely monument for present-day Christians to want to rebuild....

In response to our request for essays on the subject road, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.

Matt talks to the pastor of First Grace UMC in New Orleans about merging a black church and a white church together, preaching in a racially diverse congregation, and how context informs mission.

I had a wedding earlier this month. It was my first wedding here, in my new-ish call. The couple at whose wedding I officiated are fairly new members of the congregation. She came and visited not long after I started. A little later, he visited as well. I have some affection for the first few people who showed up the same hot summer that I did.

From his youth Lax experienced a love of God that would not abate, calling him toward both solitude and engagement with others.

That Dragon, Cancer is a unique video game: it offers us the experience of our powerlessness.

“You, Lord, are both Lamb and Shepherd.” So begins “Christus Paradox,” a hymn penned by Sylvia Dunstan more than three decades ago. According to notes on the hymn text, Dunstan first scribbled down the lyrics--rich with paradoxical, tension-laden images of Jesus--while she rode the bus home after a difficult day of prison chaplaincy.

Nussbaum, a psychiatrist who labels himself a “bad Catholic,” delves with religious fervor into the mystery of his calling to serve people who suffer. Guided by mentors like Basil of Caesarea, Hilde­gard of Bingen, and Stanley Hauerwas, he envisions medical care as a precious craft honed by the development of virtue. 

Ruth Messinger was a politician in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s before she took the helm of a respected but low-profile nonprofit focused on international development: the American Jewish W...

On Ascension Day, with the readings from Luke and Acts in danger of being embalmed by archaism, the reading from Ephesians is a gift.

There are at least two important differences between a touring musician who skips a state to make a point and a service provider who doesn’t want to provide services on account of personal opposition to the larger thing being served.

Do we bring our preformed politics into church or does the church transform us into disciples who practice a Jesus kind of politics?

Some legal scholars and advocates are calling for more disclosure about the managerial misconduct that led to the firings of two senior Episcopal Church administrators after a four-month misconduct...

Two years after the abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants in Chibok, in northeast Nigeria, parents are still hoping their daughters will return home....

If we're going to adopt business language for the church, we should think less about reaching a certain market and more about the nature of the product.