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Gil Caldwell, a ‘foot soldier’ for civil rights, turns his eye to LGBT rights
c. 2015 Religion News Service...
Gustavo Gutiérrez, theologian once investigated by Vatican, now featured speaker there
Decades ago the Vatican doctrinal office investigated and censured liberation theologians....
French rabbi asks questions others hesitate to pose about Jews and Muslims
(The Christian Science Monitor) Michel Serfaty, a French rabbi, serves a congregation in Ris-Orangis, south of Paris....
Japan’s 1 percent
We rarely think of Japan as a promising land for Christianity. But the murder of Kenji Goto reminds us that believers do exist there.
David Esterline to be next president of Pittsburgh seminary: People
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has named David Esterline as its next president....
Brutalized in Baltimore
By the time of Freddie Gray's arrest, his part of town was already awash in legitimate grievances against the police.
Eating what is set before you
I lived in Japan for three years and never ate raw horse meat, although I heard that it was a delicacy in the region where I lived. It was called basashi, I heard, and kept wondering if there would be a time when I would have to swallow my revulsion and taste it. But it never happened.
There were new and strange foods, though, and I learned that it was part of being a missionary to learn to eat things I had never tasted before, to accept hospitality as well as to provide it.
Seventy years since the war ended—and continued
The current issue of the Century features a remembrance by my mother of my grandfather’s terrifying war experience and its unfolding consequences. Tomorrow the world marks the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, when the world-shaping trauma of the war halted in Europe. My grandfather’s story is only a tiny fragment of the war, his decades of agony only a ripple in its billowing aftershocks. But it is the kind of story that is easily lost as the war recedes from living memory.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered, by Nina Sankovitch
Nina Sankovitch explores the meaning and value of letters in our post-postal age.
5 takeaways from new international religious freedom report
(RNS) The independent watchdog panel created by Congress to monitor religious freedom conditions worldwide issued its 16th annual report last week.
How a hidden past changed an anti-Semitic leader into a Jewish seeker
(The Christian Science Monitor) Csanád Szegedi remembers looking in the mirror when he learned that his grandparents on his mother’s s...
Medieval prayer wheel presents a mystery to scholars
The directions are written on 1,035-year-old vellum: “The Order of the Diagram Written Here Teaches the Return Home.” Care to play?...
Eight Associated Church Press awards for the Century
I’m just back from Toronto, where I attended the annual gathering of the Associated Church Press. The event was capped by an awards ceremony for work published in 2014, at which the Century was given the “award of merit” (i.e., second place) in the best in class category for national and international magazines.
We also won seven additional awards honoring specific work from last year.
Race and riots in my hometown and in my grandfather's
My hometown and my grandfather’s were the site of riots connected to race and law enforcement.
Laying down your soul
"No greater love than this," Jesus intones, and then he talks about laying down his life for his friends....
Ask a mortician
Morticians haven't charged too much, they've done too much. With this precisely correct claim, Caitlin Doughty earns her contrarian stripes.
Nigerian army rescues women from Boko Haram
(The Christian Science Monitor) The Nigerian military entered Boko Haram territory in the Sambisa Forest several times last week, repo...
Ethiopian-Israeli Jews protest racism in society, policing
(The Christian Science Monitor) Tensions over Israel’s absorption of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants that have simmered for decades explod...
Amid rise in refugees, Congo-Brazzaville bans wearing of veils
Congo-Brazzaville, a Central African nation, has banned women from wearing a full-face veil in public, saying it hoped the measure would prevent terrorist acts....
Two uncles
I would sit between them, and every hour or so one would murmur a response to some moppet's question, and the other would smile at his garrulity.