Latest Articles

In Iraq, my perception of good and evil began to erode. What I lost was a world that made moral sense.

Two days after Christmas, Heather Elizabeth Cook, suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, ...

I was part of a conference call recently with a number of young-ish pastors in our denomination where we were talking about Jesus’ prayer in John 17 that the his followers would be “one.” Anyone with even the most cursory understanding of church history will know that, well, we haven’t exactly done so well with this little ideal. Indeed, we might be forgiven for laughing out loud at the idea that there could be such a thing as a unified church.

In this anecdotal study of public apology, Edwin Battistella shows that our anxieties and confusions about confession are rooted in a deeper ambiguity: the tension between the culpable self and the apologetic self.

It is at this point that Jesus reminds us that God completely throws off our human calculations of what will be constant and what will change, for “what is impossible for mere humans is possible for God” he insists. 

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service (RNS) Ryan Bell—the former Seventh-day Adventist pastor who spent 2014 living as an atheist—is ready for his big reveal....

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Churches need new thinking—on the part of denominational executives, pastors brave enough to walk into challenging situations, and people willing to let go of a church model that no longer works.

The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship board knew it had a choice: build an institution, or build a movement.

Here are the most-read Century Blog posts of the year.

For this end-of-the-year post, we asked our favorite historians and writers to share prayers from the past that could serve as guides for our present.

When someone inquires how I am, I often reply, “Good. Life is full.” I say that intentionally because I have grown weary of the excuse of being too busy. There’s an implication that in my busyness I have shut out people I love. 

Here are the Century book reviews that got read the most online this year.

Gerard Russell’s account of disappearing Middle Eastern religions has an elegiac quality. It’s heartrending and often infuriating.

(The Christian Science Monitor) Under a stained-glass window depicting the angel’s joyful tidings of Jesus’s birth, candles flickered and a C...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

(The Christian Science Monitor) As the train bringing the wounded soldier home from the front line ground to a halt, the crowd on the ...

I eschew the danger of the river, but I know that it is where God leads me.

Here are Steve Thorngate's most-read posts of the year.