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Feeling less than alive
I was sitting in a seminary classroom, taking part in an internship program, and the professor was waxing eloquently about calling. It was all good. She was quoting Frederick Buechner and Howard Thurman, and describing vocation as our deepest joy and what makes us come alive.
Resurrection and Ralph
I ran into Ralph at the café. Ralph is a retired paper mill worker, a Vietnam vet, and a self-proclaimed “wise sage” who drives everyone in the café crazy with his incessant theological chatter. He always interrupts my sermon preparation. He wants to talk about God or Jesus or numerology or the chickens he’s raising. But most times, I come away from a conversation with him having yielded a little jewel of insight.
This time it was a big one.
New Jersey lawsuit seeks to ban Pledge of Allegiance
(RNS) The American Humanist Association is suing a New Jersey school district for its recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public classrooms....
Most favor generic prayer for public meetings
The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on the constitutionality of prayer at governmental meetings. A new survey finds that U.S....
The other disciples in the scene
Caravaggio painted his The Incredulity of St. Thomas sometime around the turn of the seventeenth century. Jesus (in white linen) stands to the left, Thomas is next to him (in a thread-bare red shirt), and Jesus is guiding Thomas’s hand as Thomas places his finger in the wound just under Jesus’ right breast. Two other disciples, also in red, hover in the scene
This is why . . .
First, you get a question. “What is God's will for my life?” or “Are my parents really in purgatory” or “What about babies who die before they are baptized?” or “What about all those people who lived before Jesus was born?” or any one of a number of questions you get when you wear the funny shirt with the little white tab in the middle.
TULIPs for the tolerant
So, the Internets are not friendly to Calvinists. And I get it. There are some in my Reformed tradition who would hardly want to acknowledge me as part of their theological tree....
Read this first
We asked pastors and professors, “If you had to choose one book to help a person embarking on pastoral ministry, what would it be?”
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
This is a picture of ministry shorn of all romanticism, polite piety, and social support, of ministry sustained only by Christ.
Spring books: Reviews
Our spring books issue's reviews include Deanna Thompson on Sharon Baker, Walter Brueggemann on Mary Boys, John Haught on Elizabeth Johnson, and more.
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky shows us the aches of the human heart, the deceptions we create, often unknowingly, and the hopes we have to be better people.
Description of the Parson in The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
Nestled among corrupt church officials and worldly pilgrims is this small-church pastor who is always motivated by Christ-centered love.
Journey toward Justice, by Nicholas P. Wolterstorff
After describing encounters with the oppressed in South Africa and Honduras, Nicholas Wolterstorff offers a carefully honed analysis of justice within a Christian framework.
Stay, by Jennifer Michael Hecht
Most moral arguments against suicide are built on premises of faith. But Jennifer Hecht, a poet and first-rate historian of ideas, is intent on providing secular reasons for refraining from it.
My fear of the cross
In Sunday school I colored in Jesus’ crown of thorns, brown for brambles and red for dripping blood.
Meaning and mysterium tremendum
A member of the congregation I serve died this week. It was fitting. The shadows of death linger about us this week....