Latest Articles
Students seek to revive a progressive movement
The U.S. Student Christian Movement, which officially ended more than 40 years ago, will be revived at an October 8-11 meeting at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
New to the CCblogs network
There are a number of new bloggers in the CCblogs network. Drop by and check them out:...
Sunday, September 5, 2010: Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
John Calvin grounded our need to know God in our createdness: "What is the chief end of human life?" he asked, and answered, "To know God by whom we were created." This yearning is not the same as our need to "know" other human beings.
Pension fight stirs moral issues for ELCA, publisher
As the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America fights to stay out of a legal battle over unpaid pension benefits, all sides agree on at least one point: more is at stake than millions of dollars owe...
Saying is believing
One of the things I most appreciate about the call stories in the Bible is that there is no single template....
YMCA rebrands itself as ‘the Y’
The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) will now call itself by the shortened name "the Y" as part of its newest brand strategy but officially will still identify itself as the YMCA....
Doing business with Cuba
After decades, it's clear that the embargo of Cuba has had little political effect. George Schultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, called the embargo "a failure by any measure"; it has served only to help impoverish Cubans while doing nothing to make them freer.
A review of Memory of Trees
Along America's highways, wooden barns used to reign, and blue or white silos stood like sentries. Today those wooden barns and silos are decaying, their wooden ribcages emerging like skeletons after years of neglect, and slowly being replaced by low steel buildings. Under this seemingly innocuous change in architecture lies a great American drama.
Time for poetry
When I am blessed with a little more leisure time than usual, I like to spend some of it with poetry.
Holy ruins: Photographs by Lisa Beth Anderson
At the peak of its membership in the 1960s, City United Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana, had 3,000 members.
Tutu sets retirement plans, thanks South Africans
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced his intention to wind down his public engagements when he turns 79 this October....
Visitor anxiety
I’m always a little on edge when I spot visitors at church, especially
truly new people who are checking out our congregation for the first or
second time....
A review of God’s Battalions and Fighting for the Cross
There clearly has been a marked rise of interest in the Crusades since the start of the present war in Iraq--an interest spurred at least in part by President George W. Bush's talk of an American crusade against terror in the days following the 9/11 attacks. Up to this point, the renaissance in publications about the Crusades largely has been limited to works that fit squarely within traditional historical scholarship. Stark and Housley, on the other hand, provide Crusades volumes for an age in which information is targeted to distinct and splintered interest groups.
Hard of listening
Grandma and Bob got along famously. They complemented one another: Grandma was hard of hearing and Bob was almost blind.
A long time coming: Waiting for a sign
I performed my ministry with a recurring doubt in my head: Am I truly intended and called for this work?
Methodist study finds four marks of church vitality
As the sour economy and aging buildings wreak havoc on church budgets, United Methodists are trying to get ahead of the problem and assess the health of their congregations in a bid to reverse declining fortunes.
Balthasar
The problem with liberal theology, Protestant or Catholic, says Rodney A. Howsare in Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed,
is that Christ comes too late into the picture.
Being Hauerwas
Why would anyone want to read a theologian's memoir? The answer is not immediately self-evident. One can admire a thinker or an artist and still not be drawn to the person's life story.
A Muslim group quietly prays near Ground Zero
Barely visible among the high-rise apartment buildings and cocktail lounges, a battered steel door in Manhattan's trendy Tribeca neighborhood leads to a basement jammed with barefoot men praying on...