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After Huffman Polson’s father and stepmother were mauled and killed by a grizzly bear, she retraced their steps in the Arctic region....

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Believers don’t buy the big bang, godless evolution, or human responsibility for global warming. Actually, neither do many Americans....

It’s been seven years, and I cannot access Jesus' word of peace. The tears still sting and slosh over my pail of remorse.

I’m meeting this week with The Well, my yearly cohort group. I laugh more during this week of “preacher camp” than I do any other week of the year. This year has been heavier than normal, with several concerns for friends, loved ones, and ourselves. This has made the mirth all the more necessary and sweet. Many colleagues have wished for their own preacher camp. 

So, Sarah Palin said this thing the other day about waterboarding and baptism. I wouldn’t bother bringing it up just to say that I, like so many others, find this disgusting.  What’s more interesting to me is the diversity of people who are similarly appalled.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Churches helped usher in a new era of South Sudanese politics. As the conflict continues, leaders are again seeking to be peacemakers and prophets.

American evangelicals and mainliners often seem worlds apart when it comes to engagement with social issues. Take prisons as a case in point. The rhetoric diverges along the lines that one might expect: mainliners rail against the American mass incarceration system, the new Jim Crow that locks away minorities and the poor and is sustained by in-prison private labor and for-profit facilities. They want to fight this sinful system through activism (protests and petitions), academia (lectures and scholarly books), and artistic endeavors (photo essays and poetry).  Evangelicals seek inmate conversion. 

In the early days of blogging, when it seemed like a mere handful of people were conversing on-line, I encountered Doug Hagler, Aric Clark, and Nick Larson (also known as Two Friars and a Fool)....

I don't know why you come to church on a particular Sunday, or why you don't. Sometimes you show up; sometimes you don't. When you don't, maybe it's because you are sick or out of town or your alarm clock didn't go off or you just can't bear to be in a room with those particular people on this particular day. Maybe you are caught between wanting your kids to experience God and a faith community, and the reality of what it's really like to be a part of a faith community.

Peter Leithart’s book can be seen as one long act of ingratitude. Sometimes, he seems to be saying it is more blessed to reject than to receive.

Wendy Cadge asks, What happens to religion when hospitals, many of them founded by religious groups, are secularized or otherwise constrained to serve patients beyond their founding communities?

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Luke’s report of the church’s economic sharing interrupts our reading of what might otherwise be an easy passage.

Divergent puts age-old questions of belonging in a new setting: a postapocalyptic society with the motto “factions before blood.”

I feel dread when my phone rings these days. This presents a bit of a problem, because I make my living by taking peoples’ calls. The same goes for e-mail....