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c. 2016 Religion News Service...

The new head of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium is demanding that faith-run hospitals and nursing homes have the right to refuse euthanasia to patients....

The writer of Luke may be challenging his readers to accept even those whom the oppressed might reject, but Paul reminds us to act with love in all things.

Esther's story would be infuriating if it wasn't so over-the-top ridiculous.

In March 2000, my husband and I spent a Saturday afternoon browsing our way through a local home-and-garden show. We left with a yard ornament—and an application to host an exchange student....

“I don’t do goals,” I say when it’s my turn to introduce myself. A thin blanket beneath me, my legs folded, I am sitting in a circle of women at my local yoga studio. We are at a workshop “setting intentions for the New Year” with “a feminine approach to goal setting.” I am skeptical. I am more of a “let the destination find you” kind of person. I am better at beginnings.

c. 2016 Religion News Service...

(The Christian Science Monitor) New York will appoint an independent monitor to review the police department’s counterterrorism invest...

(The Christian Science Monitor) When Melanie and Greg Magazu decided to open their family to foster children, they say the social work...

(The Christian Science Monitor) Broadcast images of emaciated children and tales of starving Syrians forced to eat grass and leaves in...

It’s damnable that any reflection on American gun violence is quickly out of date. I was in Texas when the October 1 shooting occurred in Roseburg, Oregon, leaving 10 dead including the gunman. I was revising an article provoked by that shooting when 14 were shot dead December 2 in San Bernardino, California. Now there are two statistics I can’t get out of my mind: first, mass shootings (resulting in four or more deaths) occur at a rate of more than one a day in the United States. Second, more American gun deaths have occurred since 1970 than American war deaths since 1775. This is insane. What’s wrong?

Sometimes, when I find it hard to pray, when faith, hope, and love are threatening to dry up, I zero in on a handful of desperate pleas from a handful of desperate people who come across Jesus...

The Century's new publisher is Peter W. Marty, author of The Anatomy of Grace and senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.

Wonder is an essential disposition for Christian discipleship. According to Susan Engel, children learn to wonder by asking questions and receiving answers.

As anthropologists have shown us, cohesive communities usually have narratives, traditions, and symbols that have shaped their collective psyches and have powerfully bound them together. These traditional practices make up their thought world, and when a person is displaced from that world, it makes less sense to carry on the practices. My father grew up in a clan society in pre-Korean War North Korea. His grandfather was head of the Shin clan.

Before I had children, I had a hazy image of life with kids. I don’t think I idealized it as pure ease and smooth delight, but the montage of pictures that would flash through my mind looked much more like parenting’s “best of” reel.

I used to get a phone call every Monday morning. “I just wanted to let you know what’s being said,” the caller would begin, and my body would tense as if preparing to be punched. Then, I would get the rundown of every complaint that people had about me.

Violence seems to have permeated every dimension of our common life and our imagination. Jonathan Sacks offers a wise response.

c. 2016 Religion News Service...

c. 2016 Religion News Service...