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Oscar’s last day
Fruitvale Station is a powerful, meditative exploration of one ordinary life that met an extraordinary and tragic end.
From declinism to discovery
Finitude, contingency, transience. These three linked words signal basic elements of what it is to be a human—and especially to be a historian....
Why won't Chipotle just use less meat?
Some news in the world of sustainable food: Chipotle is responding to beef supply shortages by considering looser standards. Instead of aiming to avoid all beef treated with antibiotics, the burrito chain and sustainable ag advocate may start accepting cows treated for illness, while still avoiding those given antibiotics as a matter of routine.
It's a defensible place to draw the line.
Wednesday digest
New today from the Century: Kathryn Reklis on Fruitvale Station, Martin Marty on mainline decline, more.
Ethics of Liberation, by Enrique Dussel
Enrique Dussel’s Ethics of Liberation might well seem too theoretical and too filled with jargon to merit attention in these pages....
The logic of the holy: Robert Bellah, 1927–2013
“Time in its aging course teaches all things,” wrote Aeschylus. No one learned more from it than Robert Bellah.
Political Islam on defensive across the Middle East
The backlash against Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt comes as secular forces across the Middle East are rising up in opposition to political Islam....
Sunday, September 1, 2013: Jeremiah 2:4-13
Larry was my spiritual director for seven years, but when I moved from Durham, North Carolina, to Pittsburgh, I could no longer make the monthly drive....
An overly personal reading
When I read this passage from Luke I immediately remembered an exegesis paper I once wrote after reading an article by a doctor about what disease the woman might have. He concluded that she has a certain kind of arthritis—the same kind I had been recently diagnosed with. This gave me a sense of immediate connection with the woman in the story.
Such personal identification is homiletically useful.
Do you change words for worship use?
Pastors, church musicians, worship planners: Please take the very short survey below, on the subject of changing the words to other peoples' stuff.
Don't worry, it's anonymous.
How Sunday school and elementary school are different (and the same)
I worked in Christian education for just a couple of years before I had a child of my own....
Tuesday digest
New today from the Century: Steven Tipton on Robert Bellah, Rebecca Kirkpatrick on how Sunday school and elementary school are different, more.
McWages
Fast-food workers think they deserve $15 an hour. If it looks like they are overreaching, that's just because they're so woefully underpaid now.
Cracked cisterns
Richard Lischer suggests that one of the ways to organize a sermon is around a “master metaphor”—that key image on which the sermon’s progress and structure can hang. More often than not, the scripture passage itself gives us the master metaphor.
If it’s difficult for listeners today to connect with the Bible’s injunctions against idolatry because our own idolatry looks so different, the metaphor of God as “fountain of living water” being forsaken for self-dug, cracked cisterns is striking.
The politics of Little House
Having grown up with the Little House books, I found Christine Woodside's essay on their anti-New Deal ideology completely fascinating.
Monday digest
New today from the Century: The editors on the fast-food strikes, Tobias Winright reviews Bryan Berghoef, more.
Pub Theology, by Bryan Berghoef
Once when I was playing darts with some locals in a tavern, I scored a bull’s-eye, and another player shouted, “Tobias, you’re pure evil!” Immediately tapping my inner Augustine, I responded, “Does...