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ProPublica has been doing a series of reports about the Red Cross’s misleading rhetoric about how it uses donations: The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors' money. "We're very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that's donated goes to our services," Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. "That's world class, obviously."

Last year as part of a faculty group book-read I encountered Larry Rasmussen’s Earth Honoring Faith. In Rasmussen’s view, sabbath is one of the resources that could be deployed to apply brakes to a society that is over-consuming the resources of the planet and the lives of its own members. The suggestion of the healing possibilities of sabbath resonated with me not only because of my environmental commitments, but also on a more human level.

How do you serve and support a healthy small faith community? That's one of the core questions of my doctoral research, and I've been wrestling with it as I've pored through dozens and dozens of books dealing with every form of small church life.

When I go backpacking, I pack light—no laptop, no phone, and especially no books. But reading Belden Lane, I’m tempted to begin toting a tome or two.

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(The Christian Science Monitor) To envision where the farm-animal welfare movement might go next in the United States, experts look to Europe...

When the ICE agents left, Francisco Aguirre’s supporters called Augustana Lutheran. The church had been preparing for years to take the call.

Would it be that we all could sing our souls. I think Mary helps us. I think we should read her song, and preach it, and sing it over and over again. Sampling Isaiah, Mary's song sings of mercy, strength, humility, and the truest meaning of charity. Her song hears in each of these virtues a gift of God, and a sign of God's desire for all.

Advent is a time to keep watch for the unexpected comings of God, to prepare our own hearts to make room for the Blessed One, and to be ourselves signs to the world around us of divine compassion and justice. In a month that is already far too busy and rushed, these ten general practices are not offered as one more to-do list to work through, but as ways to slow down, take a breath, pay attention, and make room in our lives for the birth of the Holy.

Merely speaking about this incident and mentioning racism resulted in the common backlash accusation of playing this mythical item. It is used over and over again by some white people instead of engaging in dialogue through sharing and listening, the choice is made to stigmatize and scapegoat those that disagree that America is mostly a colorblind post-racial nation. There are certain scripts that the white majority learns and rehearses through subtle socialization in dominant culture. Rather than doing the hard work of careful in-depth investigation of the matter, quick cliché dismissals are used to uphold the status quo. The status quo is silence about racism other than pointing out the overt cases, as well as getting into extensive conversation about reverse racism. While I have often gotten frustrated by these little remarks that dismiss black experiences without doing the hard work of listening and wrestling with another perspective, I decided that from now on I was going to “play along” with their game.

Social microhistories can capture big ideas. I’d like to write one on pickles, which are as fundamental to civilization as anything in Chesterton’s pockets.

This summer, I went to visit novelist Kent Haruf at his house in Salida, Colorado, to talk about writing and life and death....

Some children’s greatest fears live underneath their beds, and their parents have gotten up many a weary night and gone to their child’s bedroom, flashlight in hand, lifted the covers, shone the light on the dusty floor, and proved, once again, that there is no monster. When I was a boy, I had a recurring dream about a giant, scowling, and mean-eyed lumberjack.

David Keck offers a refreshing addition to the conversation about vocational expectations. Eugene Peterson’s vision of holiness resonates with Keck, but Keck takes a different tack.

(The Christian Science Monitor) This year the giant tree outside Paris’s famed Notre Dame Cathedral came courtesy of the Russian government.<...

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c. 2014 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) She was a simple Jewish girl whose love for her miraculous son embodied a message of love from God....

Construction began on the Museum of the Bible, founded and funded by Hobby Lobby’s Steve Green, in Washington, D.C., this fall, while an Oklahoma school district shelved his Bible curriculum....