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For the first year or two of my preaching life, I lived in a constant state of low-grade panic. Those Sunday morning deadlines were inflexible and unrelenting.

I read theology to understand myself and be reminded that I cannot ever hope to understand God. I get my deep meaning from reading dead Germans. Most everything else is entertainment. But it all affects my preaching.

Nearly a year after the Vatican announced a makeover of the largest umbrella group for American nuns, Pope Francis has directed that the overhaul of the ...

Ron Rash writes the way a fisherman filets. Nothing is spared getting to the meat. His sharpened knife sends the extras flying off the table....

When Ross Douthat's right, Ross Douthat's right: What I hope we don’t see, when the next race or a parade or festival looms up in front of us, are layers of extra stops and searches and checkpoints, wider and wider rings of closed streets, the kind of portable metal detectors that journalists remember unfondly from political conventions, more of the concrete barriers that Washingtonians have become accustomed to around our public buildings … more of everything that organized officialdom does to reassure us, and itself, that soft targets can somehow be eliminated entirely, and that everything anyone can think of is being done to keep the unthinkable at bay.

New today from the Century: Craig Barnes on a church that cared for a family, more preachers on what else they read for help with preaching, more.

Obama's OFNBP has kept a low profile. It's also sidestepped the thorniest issue around partnerships between faith-based groups and government.

Putting together words that can break through the sea—sometimes the cesspool—of words in which we live seems a Sisyphean task. I look for help wherever I can get it, so I read.

When I’m working on a sermon, I like to have wise women nearby. My favorite is the poet Nikki Giovanni, who tells it like it is.

This Sunday of words and songs about sheep and shepherds has always challenged me. For most of my preaching life I’ve been in or near a city. Now I live in New York City, where as far as I know even the Sheep Meadow in Central Park has no sheep. Yet here is an enduring image from Jesus, an image captured perhaps millions of times in our art, our songs, our stories.

I had one of those semi-awkward, overly familiar God-talk conversations yesterday… You know the ones, right?...

New today from the Century: The editors on faith-based partnerships, preachers on what else they read, more.

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

c. 2013 Religion News Service...

Desirable as living forever may sound, it invites us to forget another kind of desire that we creatures should not quench.

I'm the web editor in these here parts, and my morning routine includes checking a variety of sources for hits on the phrase "Christian century." This works better for us than it does for ...