Latest Articles

We may experience division in our cries to God, hearing only what’s loud right next to us. But God hears us as one human family, crying out for blessing.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Will the United Methodist Church soon have to drop the “United” part of its name?...

We found the scatter of rusted shards at the edge of a swamp. It reeked of death, in a cold, metallic way that only human beings would inflict.

I’m not writing a book on the Gospel According to the Fortune 500 any time soon. Do you know why? Because churches have a much more sustainable business model than businesses do.

Several years ago, I realized that, for a long time, I had been fighting back tears whenever I would see children run gleefully around a playground or hear them squeal with delight as they played, or notice their wonder over wildflowers, squirrels, and birdsong. It would happen, too, when I listened to a choir of children sing at the top of their lungs without embarrassment or when I saw a kids’ soccer team take the field with buoyant energy.

McEntyre has a deep concern for how language is used (see her previous work, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies)....

A new study finds that Americans say they attend religious services more than they actually do. Is this bad news for churches?

From Easter morning until Ascension Thursday, Jesus is present and absent, enfleshed and distant, there and not there. He breaks bread and disappears. He shows up like a ghost, and then eats fish like everyone else. At the end of the story he blesses them, and then he withdraws. It’s striking that the disciples’ response, rather than to be confused or bothered by this yes and no of resurrection, is to head back to Jerusalem and worship with great joy. I think I would have wanted more.

The story of John de Gruchy’s grief for his eldest son is wrenching. Yet he also wants to offer an account of Christian hope that has both biblical and scientific integrity.

People are looking to their computers, tablets, and phones for sacred moments. How are churches responding?

It used to always be energy policy that divided environmentalists: is nuclear power a problem or a solution? Is natural gas just as bad as petroleum, or a useful transitional better-than? Now that food policy has gone from being the subject everyone ignores to the subject everyone has opinions on, the thing ruining friendships is GMOs.

A few Sundays ago, as the deacons brought the offering up to the table and the congregation sang the Old 100th doxology, I found myself doing what I always do when singing that doxology: changing t...

"The kind of trenchant racism to which black people have persistently been subjected can never be defeated by making its victims more respectable. ...

In this personal, impressionistic history, journalist Shavit lays out the variety of Zionisms—secular and religious, socialist and capitalist, ascetic and hedonistic, utopian and pragmatic—that con...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

A new report, “The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States,” reads very much like a biography of Fernando Alcantar....

The highest court in Massachusetts upheld the legality of the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance on May 9, dealing a blow to atheist groups who challenged the pledge on antidiscriminati...