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c. 2014 Salt Lake Tribune...

Francis Kateh, a United Methodist physician, was among 12 volunteers who took an Ebola vaccine as the first large-scale trials of two experimental vaccines against the deadly virus began in Liberia...

The binary world of John’s Gospel is well drawn in Jesus’ talk here. How could a God of love condemn people? What does it mean to be in darkness?

Last year, the U.S. took thousands of "family units" into custody at the southern border. Nearly every woman cites violence as the reason she fled.

The Century invites readers to submit first-person narratives (under 1,000 words) on the topics song and lies.

I have used a lot of different devotional books in my day, with varying degrees of success. I remember being enamored, long ago when I was in college and sort of a Jesus-fanatic, of a classic called God Calling, which I read more-or-less faithfully for a while. God Calling was supposed to be the voice of God coming directly to me— and all of the other people who bought the book as well. I also vaguely remember a book called Come Away, My Beloved. The title makes alone time with God seem sort of, well, seductive, in a way. I don't remember if the contents of the book delivered on that promise.Then there was the task of finding a daily Bible reading. 

In discussions of poverty’s ills and cures, it doesn’t take long for the subject of root causes to come up. Not everyone agrees what those root causes are, of course—or whose fault they are. But it’s often taken for granted that you can’t just tackle a presenting problem directly; you have to go for the root, whatever it is. This certainly isn’t always wrong, but it does have a way of obscuring simple, obvious solutions.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

Fifty Shades of Grey is not a good book. The film is even worse.

It’s hard to deny these little echoes of the synoptics which John reshapes for his own dramatic purposes. It seems narratively wrong for Jesus to cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry rather than at the climactic end. It makes more sense if one hears Luke in the background ever so slightly—Jesus’ claiming of the temple as his father’s house and his identity as the Son. Here in John, he has just performed a miracle at his mother’s behest, bringing spirit into the most fleshly event of human life. Now he goes to what is supposedly a spiritual place and finds only flesh. No wonder he is annoyed.

Vinyl. It’s not just for hipsters any more. And Christians ought to listen up, because the future of the church might just be reflected in the resurgence of vinyl records.

George Steiner said that "the translator invades, extracts, and brings home." In this remarkable volume, Everett Fox does all of this.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

Early last summer, the Obama administration opened a detention center in the remote town of Artesia, New Mexico, in order to detain Central American women who cross the southern border with their children. The facility was a centerpiece of the administration’s policy of family detention, which aims to “send a message,” as Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson said, that asylum seekers from these countries are not welcome.

"That confusion—the inability to tell the difference between God and King Herod—explains...

For as long as I can remember, I've been told that I'm good at empathizing with others; that it's one of my gifts....

WASHINGTON (RNS) American presidents need wisdom, integrity, good judgment and humility. They should, if they are inclined, be free to draw strength from belief in and devotion to God....

Matthew McCullough argues that the Spanish-American War signaled a crucial turning point in American self-understanding and self-justification.

c. 2015 Religion News Service...

c. 2015 Religion News Service...