Latest Articles
India's third-gender community balances acceptance with religious identity
c. 2015 Religion News Service...
'Preacher' John Kasich could be wild card of 2016
(The Christian Science Monitor) John Kasich is a man of many passions....
A year after Ebola crisis, new cases
A year after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a global emergency last August 8, cases are beginning to appear again....
Boycotting the boycott: The problem with the BDS movement
The BDS movement posits that a just future for the Palestinians lies first of all in disengagement from and resistance to Israel. But does it?
Ordinary 18B (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a)
In this week’s reading, Bathsheba, the woman David drew dripping out of her bath and into his story, is not named.
In Chattanooga, learning to love
Just as it is the cable news network’s job to keep the fear-mongering ratings up, it is the job of religious leaders to remind us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. It is our job to make sure that we keep up our interfaith dialogue. It is also our job to inspire people to forgive.
3 simple ways to celebrate Ordinary Time
It’s no secret that I love Ordinary Time.
As time goes on, I find that the seasons I love the most in the liturgical year aren’t the high holy feasts, but the ordinary ones.
4 things to keep in mind when deciding what to do with offensive symbols
South Carolina did it. It removed a “permanently” raised Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. Now the leaders of the National Cathedral have a decision to make: Will the Jackson-Lee windows—windows extolling the Christian faith and virtue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and featuring images of the Confederate flag—stay or go?
Black clergy walk a fine line between religious liberty, discrimination
c. 2015 Religion News Service
(RNS) Since the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is constitutional, Jerry Young has been in a quandary....
U.S. Jewish groups donate to help church in Israel recover after arson
Two American Jewish organizations are among those helping an Israeli church recover from an arson attack....
Religion and politics do mix
Our beliefs inform how we live, how we order our priorities, how we spend our time and money, and how we vote. The recent papal encyclical takes this as given.
Talk about the end
Most Americans say they want to discuss end-of-life treatment with their doctors. Yet few seriously ill patients ever actually do.
The time security saw me as a threat to a new civil rights hero
I was a security threat to Bree Newsome at the Wild Goose Festival.
On Saturday, July 11, with the festival almost over, word got around: Newsome would be speaking that night. My first thoughts were: How am I going to reach an editor when there’s no cell service in this damned valley? Who’s going to lend me a laptop? Can I get enough of a Wifi signal to file a story from the café in Hot Springs? This was news, and I’m a reporter.
But that’s not all I was.
What Bonhoeffer knew
When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing to say.
Atticus and me
I read To Kill a Mockingbird the summer between eighth and ninth grade. It was a hot southern summer and my mom and I went into a bookstore to look for some indoor reading....
A psalm for the living
In his years as a pastor my husband read the 23rd Psalm at the bedsides of quite a few people who were dying. It was the most frequently requested passage among those who were facing their own going and still able to choose. When I began to volunteer for hospice, I found, as he had, that even for people who had wandered far from church, even for the skeptical and the uncertain, even for those who were unused to prayer and didn't want to be prayed over, the 23rd Psalm provided a place of return that was beautiful, familiar, inviting, and reassuring.
Our Only World, by Wendell Berry
Berry places concern for food production and land use, climate change, and the politics of sex and marriage within the context of personal responsibility and ordinary relationships....