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Visual images are powerful. We are surrounded by images used to influence our behavior as consumers. What is the role of the church in using images?...

At Spencer Memorial United Meth­odist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, nearly nine out of ten members are Liberian; another 10 percent are from Sierra Leone....

In January, Pope Francis will visit the Philippines. By 2050, there could be 100 million Catholics there.

The Ebola outbreak is centered in three West African countries where almost 4,500 people have died; 17 people have been treated for the disease in Europe and North America, most of whom are health and aid workers who contracted the disease in West Africa. Americans are vigorously debating whether to place a travel ban on anyone trying to enter the nation from affected regions. Advocates of interreligious engagement—through their willingness to move across dangerous boundaries—show us how exchange does not necessarily beget vulnerability; it can bolster our humanity.

Among the more delightful and rewarding tasks of managing a blog is dealing with the blight upon digital existence that is spam....

Did you hear about the for-profit wedding chapel owners in Idaho who are claiming a constitutional right (pdf) to refuse services to same-sex couples? From Marci Glass's entertaining post: I hate to be the one to point this out to the Reverends Knapp, but they are not, in fact, pastors of a church. They own a wedding mill.

Not all endings are bad.

(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.