Latest Articles

Isaac Hunter, the son of megachurch pastor and Obama spiritual counselor Joel Hunter, was found dead December 10 in an apparent suicide, police say....

Mandela was a master of political theater. But I loved him for his lesser-known acts, acts that revealed a truly human genius for ubuntu.

I used to read Ephesians 4 and get that vague, warm glow we Mennonites feel when we see the word peace. Now the passage stops me cold.

How many gadgets are de rigueur these days? I’m considering upgrading from my “dumb phone” to a smart phone, and I’m tempted to try an e-reader. At the same time, I’m troubled by the unspoken reality: we gadget people are an elite minority, a society of first-world people who have access to a network and its benefits that others don’t have. Or do we really believe that the entire world will soon be “like us,” connected into one happy progressively social network?

New today from the Century: Peter Storey remembers Mandela, Joanna Harader on the disunity of the Spirit, more.

John’s Christmas story contains no scary angels or shaking shepherds, no Magi bearing gifts, no star guiding their way. There’s no Mary or Joseph, no lowing cattle or humble manger....

As world leaders and ordinary citizens gathered in a South African sports stadium on December 10 to remember Nelson Mandela, abortion foes pushed a message that went against the global outpouring o...

In the past, the Mormon Church has said history isn’t clear on why blacks were banned from its all-male priesthood for more than a century. Now it is....

I am a historian of the prosperity gospel. My dad is a historian of Christmas. Yes, the apple basically fell straight down beside the tree....

And that place is Iceland....

New today from the Century: Kate Bowler on the Christmas prosperity gospel, Walter Brueggemann reviews Jerome Creach, more.

How are we to reconcile the Old Testament's violence with the gospel? Jerome Creach's book is among the best of a recent stream of books on the topic.

The Christmas story includes the very sordid tale of an engaged young woman who is apparently cheating on her fiancé. She’s carrying somebody else’s baby....

As we unpack the same ornaments, read the same stories and entertain the same deep thoughts our ancestors did, we have every reason to be gloriously unoriginal.

Though Nelson Mandela reportedly was guarded about his own religious convictions, he maintained close ties to church leaders and was deeply shaped by his Methodist education. When he talked of forgiving his jailers, called for racial enemies to live in peace, and in words and deeds opened up the path to national reconciliation, the echoes of the gospel were unmistakable.  Yet it should also be remembered that Mandela at one time embraced the use of violence as part of the resistance to apartheid.

I’ve written elsewhere about Springhouse Ministry, a church building shared by three congregations of different denominations in south Minneapolis. Here is a story about three congregations of  different faiths that are now sharing space on Long Island.

New today from the Century: Carol Zaleski on Christmas and the relationship between poetry and dogma, David Heim on Mandela's morally complex life as a peacemaker, more.

As Francis sees it, the joy of the gospel is rooted in an experience of God's love in Jesus. And this gospel gets people involved in the world's messiness.

c. 2013 Salt Lake Tribune SALT LAKE CITY (RNS) It’s what fellow Mormons didn’t say that Ryan Freeman found most unnerving....

c. 2013 Religion News Service...