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Before the Sudanese civil war, Dinka song was mostly nonreligious. The mass conversion of the people brought with it an explosion of Christian song.

At some point I picked up the idea that wiser Christians ask fewer questions. That somehow they pick up “the answers” somewhere along the way. More mature Christians could always find The Answer in the Bible, no matter how remote the question might be. And, speaking of questions, that’s one thing real Christians wouldn’t have. Or at least, I wouldn’t know it if they did.

I'm delighted that Malcolm Gladwell has rediscovered his Christian faith. But I worry that David and Goliath is like the Bob Dylan album Saved.

When I arrived in Alabama as a Methodist bishop, I asked a distinguished Alabama historian to orient me to my new appointment. He told me a story....

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

As evolution remains a contentious issue for many public schools, a new survey suggests that views on the question are driven by American...

There's a growing consensus that we should stop treating people who sell sex as criminals. But that's about where the consensus ends.

Here are this year's most-read posts from Then & Now, a weekly blog feature by historians of religion.

Here are the Century's most-read blog posts of the year. Thanks for reading.

“You have to grow tougher skin, Carol,” my colleague told me when I invited him to lunch and asked for his advice on a church matter. I inhaled deeply. That was the same response I heard repeatedly for the first ten years of my pastorate. Whenever I got frustrated, well-meaning friends and colleagues would tell me that I needed to miraculously grow some sort of Teflon epidermis. 

After two years, I visited my ailing friend. Eventually, he asked for the Eucharist—and suddenly every word mattered.

Here are this year's most popular bloggers and posts from the CCblogs network.

Recently I went to see the newly acquired 18th-century Neopolitan crèche at Chicago’s Art Institute. The giant crèche fills a 15’X15’ cabinet....

Thanks for reading my blog. Here are the 13 posts people read the most this year.

If positive thinking leaves you cold, Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote will be just what the title promises.

When Pope Francis left his script Christmas morning to ad-lib an invitation to atheists to join the prayerful in “desiring peace,” it may have been the first time an Urbi et Orbi...

I was talking with a young woman who had left our church a few years earlier and remembered that she had celebrated her birthday recently. “Happy Birthday!” I said, but she seemed confused....

In the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, my dad couldn't sing national songs. The Nazis saw the church's Psalter, however, as innocuous. Little did they know.

I’ve always approached the slaughter of the innocents as a text that demands to be preached whether it’s in the lectionary year or not. Maybe that’s my privileged life talking there—that is, my life where all my children survived childhood without a serious threat. A life where weddings and baby showers are more frequent than funerals. A life where the stability of a home and regular meals were a given.