Latest Articles
In the piazza: Conversational witness in Rome
Believers and nonbelievers alike are often reticent to talk about religion. Yet many people long for such conversations.
Did NT authors think NT writings were inerrant?
There are things which, when you are an inerrantist, never cross your mind, and yet when you cease to be one, you wonder how you could possibly have failed to think those thoughts, notice those thi...
What do you do when you find out the theologian you respected is kind of slimy?
It happens all the time: I’m reading a beautiful piece of theology, and while the thinker is waxing on elegantly about God and man, he barrels in on the subject of women or Jewish people, and suddenly I’m hit by a barrage of nastiness.
Monday digest
New today from the Century: René Breuel on conversational witness in Rome, Heath Carter reviews Kate Bowler, more.
Health and wealth
Kate Bowler chronicles how millions of Americans came to see not just wealth but also health as a birthright of the born again.
What is it like to be a creature?
We don’t know which experiences specify our humanity. But the Abrahamic faiths agree that we are made of dust and ashes, a bit of clay or a mere clot.
Book fare
I think and convey ideas more clearly at a desk with a pen in hand than I do on my feet in front of a group of listeners. That’s why books about writing and reading occupy much of my time.
Atheist group can sue IRS over enforcement of pulpit politicking
c. 2013 Religion News Service...
Data and story
Last weekend's This American Life included a great Planet Money segment about GiveDirectly, a charity that gives poor Kenyans not food or equipment or livestock or training but cash. The idea is that, whatever risks or downsides exist in just giving people money, these are outweighed by a) extremely low overhead, and b) the fact that the poor actually know best what they need.
Friday digest
New today from the Century: Carol Zaleski on what it's like to be a creature, Carol Howard Merritt on bivocational ministry, more.
Other people saying things
"The situation is no longer about being pro-former President Mohamed Morsi or pro-General Abd El-Fattah El-Sisi....
A bivocational minister warns against bivocational ministry
What will we do in the next ten years, if we have choked out all of the available pastors in this clergy bottleneck and the shortage comes upon us? Even if we simply plan for 70 percent of our positions to go away as 70 percent of our pastors retire, we will still need the 30 percent who are left.
Feds offer atheists a clergy tax break that they don’t want
c. 2013 USA TODAY
(RNS) The federal government wants to give Annie Laurie Gaylor a tax break for leading the Freedom from Religion Foundation....
The Protestant
The Protestant was sitting alone at a table in the far corner. I assumed it was because no one else spoke Protestant.
An ecumenical mind
Jeffrey Gros, one of the liveliest and most penetrating ecumenical thinkers I ever encountered, died earlier this month. A conversation with Jeff was always illuminating as well as a bit disorienting, for he had the many voices of global Christianity freshly cataloged in his brain.
Thursday digest
New today from the Century: Bromleigh McCleneghan on Antoinette Tuff, Brian Doyle's first encounter with a Protestant, more.
When Antoinette Tuff saw a gunman as a human being
As I read the headline yesterday, my heart began to pound and my throat closed up: “School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons.” This was a good story—ultimately a hopeful one—but all I could see was “school” and “gunman."