Latest Articles

The first time I engaged in the spiritual practice of walking a labyrinth was when I was entering seminary. My class traveled to a Catholic retreat center that had a labyrinth on its grounds. It was an 11-circuit, Chartres-style one with larger stones around the path and gravel on which to walk. After a brief explanation by one of our retreat leaders, we were released to give it a try. I've walked a labyrinth many times since, with mixed results.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

John McDougall, an active-duty army chaplain, has published a book titled Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger and appeared in a promotional video in uniform to promote it....

After I preach, I want to relive the moment over and over, soaring away on an ego-driven high. Beforehand, I hide in the bathroom.

(The Christian Science Monitor) They spilled out the wooden doors of the Regina Mundi Catholic Cathedral: Mothers and fathers, Hutus a...

We learned last week that the Department of Education is taking steps to provide a measure of debt relief for students victimized by the whole Corinthian Colleges debacle. That's ostensibly a good thing, but it comes with a good deal of red tape—which means not everyone will get relief quickly, or at all.

I was walking through an unfamiliar residential neighborhood to get some exercise, going at a good clip when I was brought to a sudden halt because the sidewalk disappeared. A certain establishment had not installed sidewalks along its considerable property line. The name of the establishment? Health Network. I could not continue my healthy walk past the Health Network, but had to turn around. Sometimes I think this is what the church must seem like to people outside the church—an establishment that says one thing on its sign, and another thing by its behavior.

Bruce Kramer was a dean and professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, a passionate lover of music, and part-time choir director at his Methodist church....

On first reading, the two parables in today's Gospel text seem to make less and less sense. In the first, a sower seems to leave the seed to fend for itself. In the second, a tiny mustard seed becomes a bush large enough for its branches to provide shelter for birds. (In Matthew's telling, it's a full-size tree!) When we stop to think about it, both parables are preposterous.

Yesterday I was reading about Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian, and his continuing effort to be in dialogue with evangelical Christian leaders about the acceptance of LGBTQ people in the church. He was invited to a conversation with Caleb Kaltenbach, an evangelical pastor whose parents split up because they were both gay. Kaltenbach has tried to find scriptural support for being OK with gay people generally, especially since that group includes his parents.

This beautiful book tells the story of Russia through maps, beginning with the Slavic migrations from 900 to 500 BCE and ending with what the author calls the “Shadow Empire” of the Russian Federa­...

Whatever its connotations, medieval represents half the Christian story to date. Kevin Madigan provides an excellent look at these long centuries.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

This spring, I didn't find any morels in the woods around my house. But I did find a lot of other things.

I’m a white parent, and I want my white kids to be like Brandon Brooks when they get older. He’s the teenager who filmed the pool party incident in suburban Dallas, at which a police officer violently restrained 15-year-old Dajerria Becton and pulled his gun on others. That was smart of Brooks, and bold. His remarks to the press since then have been pretty perceptive, too.

Who do you trust? When do you trust more?

Jamie Smith has written a string of smart books that explain the significance of contemporary theory for Christian life and ministry. His new field guide to Charles Taylor may be his best.

Pope Francis has approved the first-ever system for judging and possibly deposing bishops who fail to protect children from abusive clerics, a major step in responding to Catholics who have been fu...

Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa known for having the second-largest number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean, after Syria, is committing serious religious freedom abuses, according to...

When Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport first submitted her doctoral thesis on diphtheria in 1938, she was barred from completing her oral defense under Hitler’s Nuremberg Race Laws, which disenfranchised cit...