Latest Articles
Conservative surge upends Missouri Synod president: Matthew C. Harrison takes the helm
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has elected the denomination’s director of disaster response as president, a candidate backed by its more conservative members....
Members down 3 percent in PCUSA, adult baptisms up: The lowest yearly drop in the last decade
The net losses in membership in 2009 amounted to the lowest yearly drop in the last decade for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), though the 3 percent decrease to 2,077,138 members was part of a goo...
PCUSA to try again on partnered gay clergy, but reject same-sex marriage: At the biennial General Assembly
In a familiar routine, mainline Presbyterians at their biennial General Assembly voted 373-323 to lift a ban on partnered gay clergy, sending the proposed change for the fourth time in nearly a doz...
Presbyterians find common ground on Mideast: Committee members displayed "mutual forbearance toward one another"
As Presbyterians opened their eight-day General Assembly on the Fourth of July weekend, they faced a bitter debate over a report on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict....
Military restraint: A new bipartisan proposal
It’s a rare day when people as politically different as defense secretary Robert Gates, liberal Democratic congressman Barney Frank and libertarian Republican congressman Ron Paul agree on so...
Beautiful games: The World Cup
The rest of the world calls it “the beautiful game,” and for a month of World Cup soccer competition Americans get to see it on TV—the moments of explosive action and the constant...
Wired and unwired: We are losing our capacity for sustained attention
In 1993, not so terribly long ago, I signed up for my first e-mail account....
Who’s counting China? Phenomenal growth in the number of Christians: Phenomenal growth in the number of Christians
I was perilously close to becoming an agnostic—at least about certain statistics....
American export: The Chinese embrace process thought
After giving the keynote address at a recent conference on “ecological civilization” attended by more than 60 scholars and government officials from China, theologian John Cobb joined c...
Here I am: How shall I live my cancer?
It’s Thursday morning, November 9, 2006. It’s ten after nine. I’m at my desk, working through Ecclesiastes for a book I am to write....
Faith, nice and easy: The almost-Christian formation of teens
In 1984, Marvel Comics created a new nemesis for Spider-Man. The character would be a symbiote, inspired by what parasitologists call the weaker of two organisms inhabiting the same space....
Reluctant prophets: Jeremiah 1:4–10
My grandmother was 14 years old and living on a farm in Michigan when she made an appointment with her Presbyterian minister to tell him that she felt called to the ministry....
Cloud of witnesses: Hebrews 11:29–12:2
Soon after I was called as senior minister of First Congregational Church in Burlington, Vermont, a church member gave me a tour of the building....
Renewal and reinvention: UCC president Geoffrey Black
Geoffrey Black has completed his first year as president of the United Church of Christ at a time when the UCC has been emphasizing youth and technology as well as theology and social justice...
A powerful new pill
What would happen if we were to discover that an existing pill, one
already used for legitimate medical reasons and so important that it
wouldn’t be banned, was also effective in inducing abortions?
Arming the president
Rapidly shifting gears from translating Martial’s Epigrams to explicating the scriptures (Wha...
Hunger and Happiness: Feeding the Hungry, Nourishing Our Souls
For those of us living in central Nebraska, it’s difficult not to be reminded daily of the role that agricult...
Christ the Key
How is God involved in our lives? We often have difficulty answering this question. And when we do answer it, our ideas tend to be simplistic....
