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Caroline competes each summer with our pool’s swim team, and last week their coaches had given them an assignment to watch some of the Olympic time trials held in Omaha....

New today from the Century: John Buchanan on friendship at the Association of Theological Schools, Steve Thorngate on the expansive "middle class," more.

Obama's tax proposal is good short-term policy and smart politics. But it irks me every time I hear him define the middle class so expansively.

With figures like Wendell Berry, Luci Shaw and Scott Cairns in our midst, we are living in a vibrant era of Christian poetry....

With the Affordable Care Act upheld by the Supreme Court, Americans have yet another chance to learn about what the law actually contains.

Reading through the gospel for this week is sort of a horrific treat. The beheading of John the Baptist is nothing if not a great story—drama, intrigue, tension, conflict, resolution. Even as a flashback (“John, whom I beheaded, has been raised!”) to explain Herod’s response to Jesus’ ministry, it’s the kind of story one doesn’t want to read and yet cannot stop reading. But compelling as it is, I don’t necessarily want to preach about a head on a platter.

New today from the Century: The editors on health-care reform, Carol Howard Merritt on grief, more.

We’re not in the sort of culture where “my dad died over a year ago” is an excuse. But when I speak to other people who have lost loved ones, they say it takes two to three years before the wounds heal. I wonder why there is such a disconnect between our personal experience and our expectation of others.

Lit by the prodigious cinematographer Darius Khondji, Rome looks glorious in Woody Allen’s latest, an omnibus of four loosely connected comedies in different styles. The movie is a pleasant diversion, if rather clumsy in its construction.

City of Peace will appeal mainly to fans of smooth jazz, though the piano track featuring Teresa Scanlan (Miss America 2011) takes the standard “Chop­sticks” on a playful, high-speed j...

Recently I was called from a larger church to a smaller church. It's not the usual order of things.

Rod Dreher revealed recently that he couldn't come up with more than six of the Ten Commandments from memory. He also pointed out the irony of this fact coming from someone who often gets on his "high horse about theological ignorance," so I won't pile on. I've mentioned before that, while I haven't retained everything I learned at my evangelical grade school, I do recall a catchy song for remembering the U.S. presidents in order. We also performed a lot of musicals, including the popular '80s Christmas program Angels Aware.

Last spring I visited the Paris exhibition Cranach in His Time, where I was introduced to a sampling of Lucas Cranach Sr.’s diverse and sometimes puzzling range of work. Cranach (1472–1553) produced more than 1,500 paintings, not to mention engravings, decorative work and altarpieces. I began my tour with his portrait of the powerful and shrewd Frederick the Wise, who was Saxon’s ruling elector, Cranach’s patron and Luther’s protector. A little further on I studied a portrait of Luther, Cranach’s friend and partner, painted as a nonthreatening monk—an effort to persuade his critics that he was not dangerous.

New today (and yesterday) from the Century: A call to move down in the world, Kyle Childress reviews Diana Butler Bass, more.

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c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" radically reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence. ...

c. 2012 Religion News Service HUNTSVILLE, Ala....

Somehow, newspapers never publish banner headlines announcing "World's Largest Muslim State Fails to Persecute Christians."

Supporters of President Obama’s health-care reform law were elated on June 28—and a bit surprised—by the Supreme Court’s narrow decision upholding the landmark legislation....

As wildfires raged nearby, the lectionary readings spoke to the uncertainty and fear of being displaced.