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I don’t talk a lot about feminism. I serve my congregation as lead pastor, having grown from not at all thinking about pastoral ministry to being called and curious, and now having been in ministry for over 20 years. From my initial call to ordination to increasing responsibility with other staff, I feel as if my church has been one step ahead of me, more ready for me to take on leadership than I envisioned for myself.

In 2004, Brenda Cole—a colleague in a group dedicated to improving the spiritual lives of LGBT people—asked me to preside at her wedding, scheduled more than a year away....

Charles Marsh brings readers closer to Dietrich Bonhoeffer than, at the very least, any prior biographer writing in English.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Our age is tremendously excited about the visual. Yet here is Paul, firm in the conviction that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

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

Ordinarily, when Paul Ryan puts something out about poverty and social spending, the response is predictable and polarized....

A few Sundays ago I preached in a church that has three different worship services in three different locations within the church. One is a moderately sized chapel, one is a voluminous fellowship hall with a stage at one end, and the last one is the original sanctuary of the old downtown church. The variations in space accompanied the differences in worship style. The one thing all three had in common was a clock easily seen from the pulpit.

J. M. Coetzee reportedly wanted readers to discover the title of The Childhood of Jesus after reading it. I thought of this often as I read it.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Salt Lake Tribune...

On two occasions I decided to become Catholic. Both times I had to wait because I had been asked to preach or preside as a Methodist.

Years ago, at a denominational gathering, I heard a visitor from the global South say the following about North American Christians: They have so many things. They don’t need anything. Yet it seemed like the people were very thirsty, like they were in a desert and we were bringing them drops of water. These words refuse to leave me.

Whenever I go on vacation, I realize again how tangled up my faith practices are with my work....

Most of us have seen this coming for a decade, but it’s still startling to read the headlines in the Atlantic: "The Vanishing of Middle Class Clergy." None of this is news. We know pastors who feed their children with food stamps.

Rhonda Rowe and her team gathered around a diagram of the nursing home’s floor plan and determined how to split up to avoid praying with anyone twice....

Why is so much energy aimed at protesting Israel's occupation of the West Bank? Such actions are unlikely to move the levers of power.

I have many conversations with people who find it difficult to believe or people who barely believe or people who want to believe but can’t or people who are embarrassed to believe or people who look down in condescension at those who believe or people who are just bewildered that anyone could believe in something like God or resurrection or hope or any kind of future that is radically dissimilar to the present. This is the shape of our life and imagination in the post-Christian West.