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We all live with many callings in life, and the greatest is not to be a pastor—much less to be in the right job at a particular congregation.

The Times of Israel reported in early March on a controversy involving Jewish residents of East Jerusalem upset about how loudly a nearby mosque was broadcasting the adhan, or Islamic call to prayer. Amidst all of the problems confronting Israeli and Palestinian society, one might be forgiven for having missed this story. It was only a dispute about noise, after all.  Yet this was hardly an isolated event. 

I have mixed feelings about this idea of Marshall Poe’s: I think religion should be taught in college. I’m not talking about “religious studies,” that is, the study of the phenomenon of religion. I’m talking about having imams, priests, pastors, rabbis, and other clerics teach the practice of their faiths. In college classrooms. To college students. For credit.

Emily Holmes endeavors, with the help of French feminist theories, to understand several of the medieval mystics who are most alien to 21st-century religious sensibilities.

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Here in Minnesota, Lent is an almost unbearably slow wait.

Can someone be called and not know it?

“We don’t take sin seriously enough.” “We have lost the concept of sin.” Sooner or later someone always says something along those lines when talking about grace, don’t they? I mean, sometimes it’s me. In a certain sense we can’t talk about grace without talking about sin.

In 1920, not long after the Great War, a little-known agitator gave a speech in Munich on the topic, "Why Are We Anti-Semites?" The speaker concluded that it was important to prevent Germany “from suffering a death by crucifixion." Of course this agitator became quite well known—it was Adolf Hitler—and we know what his antisemitism led to.

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Turning part of the message over to church members is the concept behind a new worship model called WikiWorship—wiki as in Wikipedia....

William McElvaney, a retired Dallas pastor and former seminary president, defied United Methodist strictures against presiding over a same-sex marriage ceremony on March 1 but was uncertain whether...

The best outcome of the tensions in Ukraine would allow the country to develop its unique role as a bridge between languages and cultures.

Several months ago, I was invited by a journal to reflect on the meaning of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech 50 years later. Two months after that article was published, I was asked to give a brief talk on the civil rights movement and how it impacted me as its events unfolded. In both cases, I was asked to discuss the divisiveness that was addressed in the civil rights movement—and I could not help but reflect upon the divisiveness that bedevils much of American social and political life today.

Wow. Here's a commercial aimed at folks who think a month-long vacation sounds horrible, especially if it means suffering the indignity of driving a Honda or not living in a McMansion. In other words, it's aimed at lots of Americans.

I am in a phase of radical decluttering. The phrase “spring cleaning” comes to mind, but it’s a bit too Disneyish and doe-eyed to describe the full-scale assault currently underway against old toys, outgrown clothes, and random piles of crap inside my house. Until this is finished, I can’t relax.

Flannery O’Connor never wrote just for herself, God, and an elite group of peers. She was eager for an audience with ears to hear about grace.

Betsy had always worked across interfaith lines. She didn’t expect there would be any problems with her message in the congregation.