Latest Articles
Episcopal presiding bishop revisits 'salvation' speech: Jefferts Schori on the "great Western heresy"
In her talk to open the Episcopal Church’s triennial convention in July, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori denounced the “great Western heresy” of individual salvation and contrasted it wi...
Oldline Prostestant churches feeling their age: FACT survey results
Amid their “slow but general retreat” this decade in terms of financial health and membership, the oldline Protestant churches are especially hampered by the aging of their memberships, a new study...
Mixed identities: Religious diversity in the U.K.
London is the world’s most diverse city, with more than 30 percent of its residents hailing from outside England....
Anglicans and others: The TLS's Rupert Shortt
Rupert Shortt is religion editor of the Times Literary Sup plement in London (he also covers the fields of Latin America and Spain for the TLS) and author of two recent biog...
Pep-rally protest: Constructive nonconformity
One day in the early 1990s when the news was filled with the story of the Menendez brothers, my wife, Jane, was driving with our three-year-old daughter, Callie....
The Nestorian faithful: Assyrian and Chaldean churches
I had the opportunity to meet members of one of the world’s oldest and most heroic churches recently when I spoke to the national youth conference of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of ...
Heroic ambition: Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
I want the best for my students....
The good funeral: Recovering Christian practices
With surprising swiftness and dramatic results, a significant segment of American Christians has over the past 50 years abandoned previously established funeral customs in favor of an entirely new pattern of memorializing the dead. Generally included in the pattern is a brief, customized memorial service (instead of a funeral), a focus on the life of the deceased, an emphasis on joy rather than sadness, and a private disposition of the deceased.
A family undertaking: Caring for our dead
When Harriet Ericson died at age 93, she went to the grave in the same manner in which she lived her final years—lovingly tended by her son Rodger Ericson of Austin, Texas. The former U.S. Air Force chaplain and Lutheran pastor (ELCA) bathed, anointed and dressed his mother’s body, then laid it in a casket he had built himself and named “hope chest” to reflect the family’s faith in the resurrection. The next day, with the help of his daughters and grandsons, he lifted her casketed remains into the bed of his pickup truck and secured the precious cargofor a road trek to Minnesota, where a family grave plot waswaiting.
Fullness of life: Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
People who are satisfied and content do not seek Jesus—only those who know there is something missing from their lives.
The Resurrection Effect: Transforming Christian Life and Thought
The college where I teach is located in a small valley at the southernmost reaches of the Appalachian Mountains....
Called to order
Michael Perry (author of Population: 485 and Truck: A Love Story) turns his attention to balancing work a...
Sin Nombre
In his first feature film, Cary Fukunaga delivers a beautiful and powerful depiction of the lives of Central Americans crossing through Mexico to the United States border....
Billy Graham, political operative
"Now Watergate does not bother me,” sang Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant in the unofficial Alabama state anthem, “Does your con...
Our hearts laid bare
This week’s epistle reading ends by exhorting us to “approach the throne of grace with boldn...
Is it lawful...?
How to approach Jesus' strict teaching about divorce and remarriage as it appears in Mark's Gospel, without the somewhat more lenient amendments of Matthew and Paul?
Calvin at 500: A reformer's legacy
You may find members of Presbyterian and Reformed churches more theologically engaged than usual these days. This year marks the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth....
A vote for gay clergy: In the ELCA
Leave it to Lutherans to address the issue of gay clergy with repeated references to a “bound conscience.” The term echoes the words of Martin Luther, who when he was put on trial for his critique ...