Amy Frykholm
Reading devotional poetry with Kim Johnson
Ministry is one of the only professions besides writing where a person has daily need for poetry. Poetry refreshes and renews language and adds insight to stories we’ve heard many times. It can be woven meaningfully into sermons, and it bolsters the human spirit.
But pastors often turn to the same poets over and over again, and time to explore new territory is limited.
Wrestling with God: Poet and editor Kimberly Johnson
"Poetry invites you to have an experience. It doesn't want you to drift away into inattention. It wants to grab you."
What I am and am not reading this summer
Three things I am reading this summer, and three that I am not.
Wendy Shalit's modesty-colored glasses
What do rape, online bullying, hookup culture, MTV, child trapeze artists, and feminists all have in common? According to Wendy Shalit, they are all enemies of modesty.
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Dust, by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Owuor's novel wrestles with Kenya's bitter remnants of colonialism. Yet it suggests that the future can be shaped by people who are willing to incorporate the past with honesty and integrity.
Saving money, saving lives: Community health clinics and Obamacare
For decades, community health clinics existed on the margins of the health-care world. Now they're critical to the system.
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Book recommendations from Tanya Luhrmann
I recently interviewed cultural anthropologist and New York Times columnist Tanya Luhrmann about prayer and religious experience. After the interview, I asked her for some recommendations of books on prayer that are not "how-tos." What are some books that can help me understand prayer more conceptually and experientially?
What happens when people pray? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann
“When I started out I was focused on whether God was or was not out there. Now I am much more comfortable with ambiguity.”
Trading meetings for fiestas
Since two communities—English- and Spanish-speaking—have begun to find a path together in my church, one thing has become abundantly clear: I am going to be going to a lot more parties.
Our Spanish-speaking community has parties for everything, and everything is a party.
A conversation about theology and psychology
Pastors know that religion and psychology are intimately connected. But what about theology and psychology? Can these two very different fields of study talk to each other? What do theologians have to say to psychologists and vice versa?
On May 14 at 8 p.m. EST, the Century is cosponsoring an event with the Center of Theological Inquiry to explore these questions.
Books that helped Kent Haruf become more fully human
In a recent issue of the Century, I interview Kent Haruf, whose novel Benediction has garnered a nomination for the newly minted Folio Prize in the United Kingdom and recent reviews in The Guardian (by Ursula Le Guin) and the Telegraph. Haruf has made a life out of fine and careful reading, as well as writing. I asked him for recommendations on five books that have helped him become more fully human.
A time to split? Covenant and schism in the UMC
A growing number of UMC clergy are performing same-sex weddings in open defiance of the Book of Discipline. What happens next?
Five comforts of monocultural church
Our church is in the midst of a major transition: it’s becoming bicultural. The combined joy and pain of our growth is intense and surprising at every turn. Sometimes I wonder if this is how a tree feels when it begins to grow new branches. I often feel fatigued in advance by the complexity of the conversations we want and need to have, as well as scared of where we are going and what it will require of me.
It’s at these times that I find myself contemplating the comforts of what we used to be, a monocultural church
My church's bicultural conversations
It started with food. A long line of people stood outside the church door waiting their turn as the groceries piled up on folding tables around the sanctuary....
The precious ordinary: Novelist Kent Haruf
“I wanted to create a different kind of preacher—someone who would be in opposition to what would be normal in a small town like that.”
The Good Lord Bird: A Novel by James McBride
The Good Lord Bird is a tale of the antebellum South like none you’ve heard. A young slave is liberated by John Brown, who will later try to ignite a revolution.
Everyday blessings
Novelist Kent Haruf has often drawn on his upbringing on the sparse eastern plains of Colorado. But in his latest novel, Benediction, Haruf inches closer to his roots than he ever has. One of his central characters is a minister in a small town church that’s much like the ones that Haruf grew up in as the son of a Methodist minister.
Premarital wisdom: How pastors are counseling same-sex couples
Same-sex couples present clergy with particular challenges. Yet many ministers say this work illuminates their understanding of marriage generally.
Why are clinics for the uninsured expanding under Obamacare?
The Affordable Care Act is intended to reduce the number of people who are without health insurance. Then why are clinics for the uninsured and underinsured planning to expand?
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