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New today from the Century: Dark night of the church, open theology and the Bible, more.

What are university churches for? Are they nostalgic relics, settings for academic rites, anomalies in uneasy relationship with schools' priorities?

The German parliament has relieved Muslims and Jews by passing a law Wednesday (Dec. 12) that allows infant male circumcision for religious reasons....

A graduate counseling student who was expelled from Eastern Michigan University after citing her faith when she declined to advise a gay client has settled her case with the school....

NEW YORK (RNS) After a 40-year engagement and 20 short months of marriage, Edie Windsor and her late spouse, Thea Spyer, are getting their day in court....

WASHINGTON (RNS) More than a third of Americans believe the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence that we are in the "end times" described in the New Testament – a period of turmoil prec...

Pastor Travis Smith paced First Baptist Church’s sanctuary, decorated for the holidays. He addressed his congregation in Stover, Missouri, about forgiveness....

As a kid I loved to play Monopoly. Loved it. Friends and I would have marathon games, fighting over close readings of the rules, bargaining for half an hour while the dice and younger siblings sat idle, the whole deal. My sisters still talk about the time I prematurely ended a game I was losing by flipping the board over and scattering the pieces everywhere.

I casually asked a parishioner the other day how he lost his hand. I knew it happened when he was a young man, so I didn’t expect him to get emotional....

New today from the Century: the purpose of university churches, the purpose of the game Monopoly, more.

Christians have always been uncomfortable with the Magnificat. Advent takes us places we would rather not go.

The passage (Mark 12:41–44) about the poor widow who put “everything she had” in the temple treasury was among the lectionary readings a few weeks ago, and it’s a frequent text for stewardship sermons. The example of the widow’s generosity seems clear enough, and it’s part of the church’s standard repertoire about sacrificial giving.  But Fergus Kerr suggests that the story is about not generosity but exploitation. 

Who or what is the book of Job about? Many of us would say the book is the story of Job and about the problem of suffering. When in the past I read Job as the Bible’s discussion of why bad things happen to good people, I found it a frustrating book. While the question of suffering is discussed for chapter after chapter, the question of why people suffer isn’t ever answered--even when God shows up and speaks to Job. God doesn’t answer Job’s and my question.

New today from the Century: the widow's mite, Reading Job, John Buchanan on the Magnificat, more.

The Gideon Bible treats the Bible as comfort food. But a diet of the Bible consists of conflict and confrontation.

Most Americans are morally uncertain about abortion. Absolutists exist—like the defeated U.S....

Over the years I’ve taken part in some amazing celebrations....

WASHINGTON (RNS) Most Americans who file income tax returns won't be affected by proposed changes in how charitable contributions are deducted because they don't itemize their deductions, federal i...

At its heartwarming core, Christmas is the story of a birth: the tender relationship between a new mother and her newborn child....

CANTERBURY, England (RNS) New figures from the 2011 Census show that the number of people who identify as Christians in England and Wales has fallen by 4 million over the last 10 years....