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A 2007 Kelton Research survey revealed that people know more about what goes into a Big Mac than they do about the Bible; they can name members of the Brady Bunch better than they can name the Ten Commandments. Twelve percent of adults think that Noah’s wife was Joan of Ark, and about half don’t know that the book of Isaiah is in the Old Testament. The situation might have comic possibilities for Jay Leno and other comedians, but for preachers working to craft a biblically based sermon, the situation is confounding. If parishioners can’t follow references to significant people, places or things in the Bible, they may miss or misunderstand the whole message.

“Are you scribes gone awry?” Jesus asks us. “Have you got good religion?”

This Hebrews text is a word crafted for a specific people by a caring preacher.

Can I really reinvent myself, maybe by moving out west to California? Just what is a self anyhow?...

Biblical Literacy provides a remedial education....

Bright Star is a die-hard romantic’s romance, eschewing tawdriness in favor of shy smiles, stolen glances and soft kisses....

America’s fundamental problem with health care isn’t economic. It’s moral. So believes T. R....

The very idea of preaching a single doctrine seems misguided, even though it’s far superior to preaching on neat themes that intrigue the consumers out th...

Over the past eight years, I had the privilege of serving as program coordinator for the Lilly Endowment’s Transition into Ministry grants program....

For most of canonical history, Mark's Gospel has been considered an ugly duckling and its author a clumsy yokel. It can hardly be a coincidence...

It is impossible, I believe, to have another All Saints Day come and go without recalling and giving thanks for those saints without halos—family members, mentors and friends—who were gifts of God ...

I have a friend who was a college professor before she made the brave decision to leave the security of academia and strike out on her own as a writer....

Was former president Jimmy Carter identifying the elephant in the room or seeing a phantom when he charged that much of the opposition to President Obama’s health-care reform is motivated by racism...

God for a change: The Shona people of Zimbabwe have many names for God. Janice McLaughlin's favorite is Chipindikure, which means "the One who turns things upside down." It comes from the word kupinduka, which means "to be uprooted." Says McLaughlin, a longtime Maryknoll missionary: "What an amazing concept to explain God's presence in the often unwanted and unplanned changes that happen to us throughout our lives" (Ostriches, Dung Beetles, and Other Spiritual Masters, Orbis).

Followers of the media furor about evolution and God imagine that they have to choose between Darwinian theory and belief in divine providence. The most vociferous current contestants in this debate are either atheistic supporters of evolutionary theory or Christian supporters of the riposte position known as intelligent design. I suggest that there is a way to avoid this false disjunction altogether. New discoveries about the phenomenon known to evolutionary theorists as cooperation give us fresh reasons to regard evolutionary theory and classic Christian theism as entirely compatible—indeed, richly and convincingly so.

Moni Basu, a former writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has won the top two prizes, for reporting and writing, from the Religion Newswriters Association....

The Church of Nigeria has chosen a 57-year-old retired lieutenant colonel from the Nigerian army, Archbishop Nicholas Orogodo Okoh, as its new primate to lead some 20 million Anglicans in the west ...

The number of atheist or agnostic student groups on U.S....

Dozens of legal and religious groups have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to rescind a Bush-era memorandum that they believe wrongly permitted a religious charity to receive federal grant money ...

Despite a highly publicized effort to regain the presidency of the nation’s largest African-American Baptist denomination, disgraced pastor Henry Lyons overwhelmingly lost his election bid last mon...