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Julia Scheeres’s unsettling book reminds us that Peoples Temple could have appealed to anyone concerned about racism, sexism and poverty.

Israelis take great interest in archaeology, as findings can validate Jews' ancient claims to the land. Of course, Palestinians have similar claims.

With every cycle of our respiratory systems, we are sustained by the same intimate inspiration God exhaled into Adam’s muddy lungs. That breath permeates every cell of our being, nose to toes, invigorating our bodies and minds and souls until it is ready to be released, silently, from the same nostrils through which it came. This is as ordinary as oxygen and carbon dioxide, and as extraordinary as spirit and miracle.

How do we solve the gender gap in ministry? With women outnumbering men in seminaries today, how we do break that stained glass ceiling? Our current approach in the Presbyterian Church is to require churches, when looking for a pastor, to interview at least one female candidate. The thinking is, of the final three or four candidates, there would be a woman in the mix, and perhaps even churches with an unspoken default of pastor=male might be sufficiently moved to think outside the box. Not that every church will follow that up with a call to that woman, of course. This is mysterious Holy Spirit stuff, not to mention that there are women pastors who aren’t all that. But churches should at least look. Do you think this helps?

New today from the Century: The politics of Israeli archaeology, the trouble with requiring churches to interview a female candidate, more.

Movies about education are seldom convincing; their depiction of what goes on in the classroom hardly ever tallies with our own experiences. So the sweet and poignant Quebecois film Monsieur Lazhar is a rare pleasure.

It’s tempting to dismiss SBNRs as salad-bar spiritualists concerned primarily with themselves. But many assumptions about this group are off target.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) The small stack of envelopes that arrives at Grace Community United Church of Christ in St....

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In an unprecedented act of defiance, a California region of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has rejected a ruling from a church court to rebuke a pastor who wed same-sex couples....

More than two dozen faculty members have resigned from Shorter Uni­ver­sity, a Baptist school in Georgia, after it required them to sign a “personal lifestyle statement” that condemns homo&...

Nearly three-quarters of people in England believe that Queen Elizabeth II should retain her position as titular head of the Church of England, according to an opinion poll....

Like most churches, we occasionally receive requests for money from people in our community. I suspect I am not alone when I say that I have come to dread these calls....

I grew up on evangelical praise choruses. I cut my musical teeth playing them at church....

New today (and yesterday) from the Century: Misconceptions about the spiritual-but-not-religious, the editors on why eliminating food deserts isn't enough, more.

M. Ward’s solo albums reveal that he surpasses his more-famous collaborators (Conor Oberst, Zooey Deschanel) on all fronts. His sound has a sepia-toned timelessness; it’s both inventive and a whole bunch of kinds of old-fashioned.

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c. 2012 St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. CLAIR, Mo....

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