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I’m reading Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship along with our Lenten Bible study on the Sermon on the Mount. I’m not sure when I last spent any time with this Christian classic (25 years, 35 years?). Coming back to it after all those years, it’s striking both in the way it reflects its historical context and the ways in which it transcends its time and still speaks to us decades later.

We know about all of the shifts in communication and technology, but there are also huge changes when it comes to giving money. Younger generations often think much differently when it comes to finances and budgeting, and we should think differently as a church as well.

In the Hitler era, a small number of German pastors associated with the Con­fessing Church dared to speak against Nazi rule. Some lost their lives for doing so....

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

For the first time in its long history, Thrivent Financial is not just for Lutherans....

A leading member of the Church of England has called on gay bishops to “come out” as England celebrated its first same-sex weddings in secular venues....

The RFRA is a good law. But it wasn’t designed to grant religious rights to businesses—or to let people impose their beliefs on others.

I remember I stopped dead in my tracks. I had been walking along the flat, dark shale bed of the ravine behind my grandfather’s farmhouse in southern Indiana. There on the ground, still in perfect alignment, lay the skeleton of a cow that had wandered away one winter many years ago and had slipped and fallen into the ravine. The bones lay in precise order—the head bone connected to the neck bone, the neck bone connected to the back bone, and so on.

This weekend, I went and saw The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was good. It also failed the Bechdel test spectacularly: I don’t think two female characters ever spoke to each other at all, much less about something other than a man. Later, I watched the new episode of The Good Wife. Now there’s a show that aces the Bechdel test, week after week.

Nigel Biggar thinks that Western Christians are willfully ignoring that soldiers and military action are essential to social peace and justice.

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

I was at a clergy meeting this week and someone said, “Alban was right about family-sized churches...” and everyone in the room shook their heads. We didn’t need any explanation....

“When you give alms,” says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret wi...

"Viewers don't expect male protagonists like Don Draper or Walter White’s story arcs to be solely propelled by their love lives. ...

In The Walking Dead, there's a crucifix at a Baptist church. Why don't producers check such details with somebody who is actually religious?

c. 2014 Religion News Service...

Christian relief organization World Vision has reversed its decision after announcing that it would no longer define marriage only as between a man and a woman in its employee conduct manual....

So long, ugly church. Very few people will miss you....

Evangelist Franklin Graham is praising Russian president Vladimir Putin for his aggressive crackdown on homosexuality, saying his record on protecting children from gay “propaganda” is better than ...

As soon as troops massed on Ukraine’s border and well before Russian president Vladimir Putin declared that Crimea had rejoined Russia, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church called for pr...