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Jesus and Nicodemus might as well be speaking different languages. Jesus speaks of birth from above; Nicodemus is befuddled. Jesus speaks of the spirit as wind blowing where it will; Nicodemus wonders how this can be. They are like a creationist and a paleontologist comparing notes on fossils--they simply can't fathom each other. Their organizing assumptions are too different. Here's when we sense that Nicodemus begins to understand what Jesus is saying: when Jesus reinterprets the story of Israel in the wilderness, drawing from the language that has oriented Nicodemus's life and thought. It doesn't seem likely, after all, that the series of puzzling metaphors Jesus begins with would push Nicodemus to understanding. But something clearly does.

New today from the Century: video games and moral formation, internal vs. external church-based advocacy, more.

Do we spend more time in closed rooms--trying to articulate to other church professionals why we are right--than we spend speaking to the media and articulating to the larger world why we believe in the inclusive love of God?

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) Radio evangelist Harold Camping has called his erroneous prediction that the world would end last May 21 an "incorrect and sinful statement"...

c. 2012 Religion News Service CLEVELAND (RNS) In an extraordinary move, the Vatican has reversed the...

c. 2012 Salt Lake Tribune (RNS) A technological crackdown has effectively blocked a prominent whistle-blower from accessing the Mormons' database that chronicles so-called...

c. 2012 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY (RNS) The task of giving the "authentic interpretation" of...

Christians comprise half of the world's 214 million migrants—those who have moved from their country of birth and are now living...

I’ve been meaning for some time to come back to a topic that has been garnering attention, the news that some Bible translations aimed at predominantly Islamic contexts were not using the phrase “son of God,” ever since I circulated an online article mentioning the news and was met with expressions of concern because that particular piece posed the matter in an inflammatory manner. (See Eddie Arthur’s blog post and longer pdf for more information.) When it comes to this issue of translation, I think that replacing “son of God” with something else can be not only appropriate, but in keeping with the spirit of the history of biblical translation.

Michele Chabin reports that Israeli postal workers are refusing to deliver Hebrew-language New Testaments. Mark Silk asks an interesting question.

I've heard the Century referred to as moderate, center-left, progressive, left-wing--all from some who meant these labels as compliments and others who very much did not....

New today from the Century: Dennis O'Brien on Stanley Cavell, translating the son of God, more.

More books have been published about Stanley Cavell than he has written himself. Why?

“You are here to kneel,” wrote Eliot, “where prayer has been valid.” But which prayers are valid at the Mezquita Catedral, or at Hagia Sophia?

When Abby Kelley, a 19th-century abolitionist, expressed a desire to address the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, this is how a local minister argued against her right to do so: No woman will speak or vote where I am moderator. It is enough for a woman to rule at home… she has no business to come into this meeting and by speaking and voting lord it over men. Where woman’s enticing eloquence is heard, men are incapable of right and efficient action. She beguiles and binds men by her smiles and her bland winning voice… I will not sit in a meeting where the sorcery of a woman’s tongue is thrown around my heart. I will not submit to PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT. No woman shall ever lord it over me. I am Major-Domo in my own house.

Colbert for the civil-libertarian win.

New today from the Century: Philip Jenkins on contested holy ground, Julie Clawson on International Women's Day, more.

Undefeated is a solid piece of filmmaking that is also too little too late. The Oscar-winning documentary by Daniel Lindsay and T. J. Martin concerns the travails of a high school football team in a poor black neighborhood of North Memphis that overcomes years of futility thanks in large part to a white volunteer coach who inspires them to believe in themselves both on and off the field.

Chronic illness is like Walden: life is pared down to essentials. But unlike Thoreau, I can’t walk away.

c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) It's almost Purim, and Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is feeling a mix of joy and dread....