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(The Christian Science Monitor) The way corporal punishment evolved in Sandy Haase’s family is, in many ways, typical....

c. 2014 Religion News Service (RNS) Mark Driscoll is back. Sort of....

We were talking about health and mental health the other day in staff meeting, and I asked why mental health issues couldn’t just be called health issues....

For mainline pastors, the Driscoll saga—the conflict at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church leading to the resignation of superstar pastor Mark Driscoll—can seem like a number of things: an entertaining but irrelevant sideshow, a distraction from the real work of God’s kingdom, or the long-overdue fall of someone whose theological views and ideology are so different from ours. We feel so distant from Driscoll and what he stands for that we can almost watch with bemused smiles. And it’s just this sense of distance that might keep us for seeing this situation the way we should: as a cautionary tale.

Michael Waldman traces the Second Amendment's life, from militias to the NRA to the newfound right to have handguns at home.

c. 2014 USA Today MONROVIA, Liberia (RNS)  Ever since Frank Mulbah’s mother died of Ebola in August, no one will go near him....

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

(The Christian Science Monitor) Back in May, when the Ebola virus first crossed over from Guinea into Sierra Leone, among the first to k...

The embattled General Theological Seminary will keep its controversial dean and is prepared to reinstate the majority of its faculty....

(The Christian Science Monitor) A Pakistani high court has upheld the death sentence given to Asia Bibi, a jailed Christian woman convicted o...

Leaders of a church that was destroyed during the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City broke ground on a new St....

"It is better to marry than to burn," says Paul. This strange, embarrassing passage may offer some ground for fresh discernment.

Have you ever been inordinately annoyed by someone else's clothing? I have, and in my experience this is a classic indicator of what this week's Leviticus reading calls “hating someone in my heart.” When I'm repressing anger or frustration, I suddenly notice the hideously out-of-date belt my relative is wearing, or the way-too-short-in-every-inseam pantsuit my co-worker has on. The clothes are never the true offense, of course, but they send off alarms: time to speak up. 

The narrator of one of Alice Munro’s short stories described a middle aged woman this way: “Here she sat and saw her day as hurdles got through.  Not much to her credit to go through her life thinking, Well, good, now that’s over, that’s over. What was she looking forward to, what bonus was she hoping to get, when this, and this, and this was over?” (Selected Stories, 1997). Sometimes it’s that way for us, I think. 

The last time my family visited New York City, we stopped by a board game coffeehouse....

As I drove home from breakfast with a church member recently, I caught the last 15 minutes of The Diane Rehm show on NPR. She and her panel were discussing the upcoming midterm elections. One of them shared a recent poll, in which only 15 percent of respondents said they were “closely following” the midterm elections. Among voters ages 18-29, that number is 5 percent. The topic turned to voter turnout, especially among young people. How can we get young people to register and vote? 

This past summer, a judge in New York City ruled against three families who filed suit against the public school system, claiming their right to free exercise of religion was violated when their unvaccinated children were barred from school. In another case last year, a measles outbreak sickened unvaccinated members of a large church in Texas, drawing claims the church had discouraged vaccinations. The church later hosted vaccination clinics, and a spokesman denied the church had ever advised against vaccines. These public episodes seemingly pit immunization against faith. Yet Christians have a long history of promoting vaccines. ...

The mainline has struggled to express an ethics or spirituality of sexuality. Verlee Copeland and Dale Rosenberger seek to fill that gap.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...