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Low-tech Bond
Viewers don’t look to James Bond movies for profundity. Mostly they go to see buxom babes (now brainier and badder) and gravity-defying vehicle chases. But the most recent Bond installment offers some pertinent comments on technology.
Guns as the price for freedom?
President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.
The most popular subscriber-only Century articles
Here's a separate top-12 list of just our paid content—i.e., the most popular articles of the year that were read online only by Century subscribers.
Lullaby, by Justin Roberts
Cleverly disguised as bedtime music for young ones, Lullaby doubles as an album of exquisite, dreamy chamber pop that showcases Justin Roberts backed by a string quartet, trumpets and Fren...
The Quest for the Historical Satan, by Miguel A. De La Torre and Albert Hernández
According to Albert Schweitzer, the quest for the historical Jesus ends with the questers looking down a well and seeing their own reflections....
The postpartisan partisan: Obama as Christian realist
Obama embraces both the idealistic and realistic poles of Christian action. He recognizes with Niebuhr that politics is inherently tragic.
Sunday, January 6, 2013: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6
When I was growing up in a Lutheran parsonage on the prairies of North Dakota, our congregation hosted mission festivals during Epiphany....
Musical preaching
For sermon-prep help, I frequently look at hymns, paintings, novels, poems, etc. Also Bach cantatas. Meinen Jesus laß ich nicht, written for the first Sunday after Epiphany, has intrigued me with its interpretation of Luke 2:41-52.
The most popular network posts
Here are this year's most popular bloggers and posts from the CCblogs network.
The most popular Century articles
Here are the Century magazine articles that were most popular online this year. Thanks for reading.
Bochristing day
Normally my siblings and I spend December 26 goofing around together. This year, however, we felt the need to create something that addresses an important issue facing our Christian sisters and brothers elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
For a While, by Dolly Varden
Steve Dawson of the five-piece band Dolly Varden shows sharp lyrical skill on the plaintive “Del Mar, 1976,” which invokes water towers and “the sad songs of the ’70s playing soft from a radio at t...
From nuns to 'nones,' 10 ways religion shaped the news in 2012
WASHINGTON (RNS) From the nuns to the "nones," religion dominated the headlines throughout 2012....
Truck driver pleads guilty to setting Ohio mosque on fire
TOLEDO, Ohio (RNS) An Indiana man who said he gets all his information about Islam from talk radio and Fox News has pleaded guilty to setting fire to a mosque in September, but local Muslims voiced...
As bells toll, clergy push Congress on gun control
WASHINGTON (RNS) As bells tolled across the country on Friday (Dec....
Pope Paul VI is nearing sainthood status
Pope Benedict XVI has moved Pope Paul VI closer to sainthood by acknowledging his predecessor’s “heroic virtues.”...
Born of God
I’m not always enamored with our traditional, staged pictures of the nativity—with Mary on her knees in adoration.
Christmas unvarnished: A savior for a troubled world
I once preached a Christmas sermon that struck out with one family. I had underestimated the peril of tampering with holiday sentiment.
Blue hearts
On Sunday I attended a worship service at which the air was heavy with a sense of loss. But I saw the church being the church at its best.
My Magnificat setting
I used to write a lot of very personal songs. Confessional stuff, bewilderingly specific and self-consciously literate. I grew out of it. Now I write mostly church music.